“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” Warren Buffett

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.” Ben Graham

“We don’t have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.” Charlie Munger

We do not have to be brilliant to preserve our wealth. When it comes to investing, discipline can make you smarter than the smartest man in the world.

Sir Isaac Newton is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time. His role was key in the scientific revolution.

His book “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” laid the foundations for mechanics.

He supplied a foundation to optics.

He helped develop modern calculus.

Newton formulated the laws of motion and gravitation and confirmed the heliocentric model of the cosmos.

Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope.

His theories about color and cooling and the speed of sound were spring boards in physics.

In math, Newton contributed to the study of power series, the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, and a method for approximating the roots of a function.

He is said to have been the greatest genius who ever lived!

But Sir Issac Newton also lost his shirt in the stock market. His comment was “I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies but not the madness of the people.“

Sir Issac forgot the intelligence in seeking value. He ignored the fact that buying and selling discipline is more important than being smart.

Use math, not emotion to protect your wealth.

There are time tested mathematical systems that can help you know when to take profits that maximizes gains and minimizes loss.

These systems help you seek value but also create disciplined exit strategies because one of the toughest decisions most of us have is to know when to sell a rising or falling share.

Human nature makes it harder to let winners run, than to cut loses.

Let’s look at a real time example of how purposeful investing strategies can increase profit. In this real example, in 2002 Merri and I invested in Jyske Bank shares. We were visiting the bank with a group of readers. We had been in Copenhagen for several days and took the group out to the bank’s headquarters in the small charming village of Silkeborg. We visited the CEO (who has been a friend for many years) in his new modest offices, saw the bank’s new currency trading room and visited with the Jyske Invest Fund Managers. What impressed us was the conservative and balanced thinking throughout the bank. There were no staff limos or corporate jets. The CEO’s office was small with walls of glass so staff could see him at work. The bank worked for and talked about the long term view.

Jyske Bank share price since September 2002.

We invested in Jyske shares at DKK96.50 on 2nd September 2002. We sold half in April 2006 at DKK352.50. The share price of the remaining shares we hold have never dropped below our purchase price. Today the share price is over DKK300 again.

Could I have done better with a mathematical system? I asked Dr. Richard Smith, CEO of Tradestops.com, who has a PhD in mathematics and is one of the experts we use in our system, to see how his trailing stops strategy would have increased my profit.

It turns out I could have done better. Much better. Here is the chart of the trailing stops that his strategy would have given me had I been using it.

Click on image to enlarge.

Let’s look at three scenarios to show the difference in profit between using simple buy and hold with no stops, my system of taking back the original investment and the Trailing Stops strategy. For simplicity sake, I am not including dollar to Danish kroner fluctuations. The forex fluctuations would make a difference if calculated in US dollars performance but we’ll analyze that element of the invest in another message.

Scenario #1: DKK100,000 becomes worth DKK350,158. Profit is DKK241,880 in 15 years. In this scenario we assume a DKK100,000 investment. The investment is at DKK96.50 so 1036 shares were purchased. The assumption in this scenario is that all the shares have been held. The price of today’s quote (April 23, 2015) is DKK330. The value is DKK341,880 on DKK100,000 invested.

Scenario #2: DKK100,000 becomes worth DKK357,679. Profit is DKK247,840 in 15 years. Assume again, DKK100,000 investment. 1036 shares were purchased at DKK96.50. In this scenario, (what I actually did), 285 shares when the price reached DKK352.50. This returned my original investment appx. DKK100,000. The remaining 751 shares at 330 (4/22/2015 price) are still held so are worth DKK 247,840. This represents a total profit of 247,840. This is a little better than keeping all the shares, except the shares sold in 2006 created new opportunity potential for nine years so this scenario is actually much better than the numbers appear.

Scenario #3: DKK 100,000 becomes worth DKK1,156,069. Profit is DKK1,056,069 in 15 years. As in the other two scenarios there was a DKK100,000 investment. 1036 shares were purchased at DKK96.50.

Dr. Smith, backtracked to and see what the system would have done would with this share.

Richard sent the exact dates with buy and sell numbers:

Exit @ 325.50 on 6/13/2006. All the shares are sold bringing in DKK337,218.

Buy @ 321.98 on 10/9/2006. The DKK337,218 buys 1047 shares.

Exit @ 404 on 6/8/2007. This sale grosses DKK422,988

Buy @ 118.5 on 3/20/2009. The DKK422,988 buys 3,569 shares

Exit @ 170 on 8/10/2011. This sale grosses DKK606,730

Buy @ 173.40 on 2/1/2012. The DKK606,730 buys 3,499 shares

Still in @ 330.4 on 4/22/2015. The share value at this time is DKK1,156,069.

Wow, what a difference if one followed and used the trailing stops. The trailing stops and re buy signals increase the investment by 11 times versus 3.5 times in the other scenario.

The Jyske shares have a volatility quotient at this time of 15.5% so would create a sell signal at around DKK287 at this time.

These scenarios are based on approximations and do not include trading costs, management fees, etc. so the real money in the bank would not be exactly this amount. For our analytical purposes this study suggests that trailing stops help us protect the successes we gain in spurts.

This type of math creates great discipline so you know not to sell too soon and give away profit but, also know not to hold too long and give away returns already made.

These scenarios are based on approximations and do not include trading costs, management fees, etc. so the real money in the bank would not be exactly this amount. For our analytical purposes this study suggests that trailing stops help us protect the successes we gain in spurts. To learn more, click on the link below.

The equity market shifts that value analysis have predicted may be starting to steamroll a bit. This process will be helped by negative return European bonds. Last week in the Wall Street Journal article, “European bond markets go down the rabbit hole” said: Europe is no stranger to the avant-garde, the experimental and the absurd. But until now, they have largely been the preserve of the arts. Now the financial world—and in particular the bond market—is increasingly challenging fundamental tenets of investing. Take last week as an example. Switzerland became the first sovereign to issue a 10-year bond carrying a negative yield, raising 232.5 million Swiss francs ($237.2 million) with investors paying for the privilege of lending. And German yields continued to grind deeper into negative territory: yields on eight-year bonds briefly dipped below zero, while the two-year yield stands at minus 0.277%.

There are some good points about European banking however, such as getting to visit great cities and great institutions like the Austrian cafes.

Cafe Lantmann Vienna, one of our favorite cafes. More on this in a minute.

ENR Asset Management’s April 2015 Market Outlook shows some additional reason why European shares offer good value and more immediate opportunity now. The Outlook said: “The first quarter (Q1) proved challenging for global equities. After outpacing bonds the first two months of the year, the MSCI World Index struggled the latter half of March as earnings, fears, soft U.S. economic data, Middle East tensions and interest rate uncertainty drove investors out of risk assets.

“The S&P 500 Index, red- hot over the past several years, has succumbed to more volatility and trails Europe, our prime regional recommendation heading into 2015, logged its strongest quarter in local currency terms since 2008; in dollar terms, European equities edged-out the S&P 500 Index, Over the past eighteen months, U.S. investor sentiment has remained overly exuberant, pointing to a major sell-off or an imminent correction.

“The worldwide sell-off in late March should come as no surprise. Investors should continue to purchase high quality dividend-paying global multi- nationals on any intermittent decline. The land-scape for earnings has shifted to Europe in 2015 largely because of a weak EURO and the European Central Bank’s (ECB) asset purchase program. Investors should focus on building new and existing positions in euro-zone large-caps and small-caps.

“Over the last few months we’ve made the case that European investors would gradually shift out of fixed-income securities and into stocks amid ultra-low interest rates. Europe has been the prime beneficiary of this asset allocation shift supported by an assertive ECB. Roughly 50% of the euro-zone bond market now yields a negative rate of interest on sovereign debt up to five years in some markets, including Germany.

“The U.S. Dollar Index hit a fresh 12-year high earlier in Month but has since started a modest correction. According to Wisdom Tree, European smaller companies sell at 16.8 times trailing earnings and filed about 3.5% in dividends. That’s better value than the S&P 600 Index, which has already recorded substantial profits since the financial crisis low six years ago and trades at lofty levels.

“Also, European small-caps should post better than earnings this year compared to larger companies.

“Why we like European Small-Caps now:

* Dividends are more than three times greater compared to U.S. small-caps

* U.K. small-caps have trailed other smaller company indices

* The ECB’s new QE program will boost liquidity

* Institutional investors have yet to pile into European small-caps

“We’re big fans of Wisdom Tree. The ETF (exchange- traded-fund) sponsor and manager is a value and income-based ETF specialist, focusing mainly on sectors of the global market that offer deep value, dividends or a combination of both.

Our reports over the past year (and Merri’s and my personal investments) have focused on this European equity value. For decades, I used three banks and brokers to execute long term value opportunities like this. Jyske Bank (Copenhagen), Smith Williamson (London) and Valartis, (Vienna).

Regretfully last year, Smith Williamson stopped accepting US residents. Now I regret that Jyske Bank has also announced that they will stop serving US customers this July.

I transferred my Smith and Williamson London account to a local (U.S) community bank that has the ability to buy and sell and hold overseas equities and bonds. I have transferred my Jyske account holdings to Valartis Bank AG.

The roots of Valartis Bank AG (Austria) go back to 1890 when it opened for business in Vienna. The bank remained privately owned until 1966 when it was purchased by Nicholas Deak who changed the name to Bankhaus Deak. I began banking with Bankhaus Deak in the early 1980s and over the years watched several new owners change the name several times. In 1988 Royal Trust Bank of Canada became the owner and the Bank became Royal Trust Bank Vienna. The name changed again in 1995 when Anglo Irish Bank of Ireland purchased the bank.

In 2008 the Valartis Group AG., a publicly traded Swiss holding company, purchased the bank, and Anglo Irish Bank (Austria) AG was renamed Valartis Bank (Austria) AG. The staff during this entire time has remained truly multicultural, speaking 22 different languages.

London, Copenhagen and Vienna are three of Merri’s and my favorite European cities and we’ll deeply miss the banking connection and our banking friends in London and Copenhagen, but we are happy that Vienna is still offering to serve US clients.

The pleasures of Vienna go beyond banking. Volartis Bank in Vienna bank is located just around the corner from Cafe Landtmann a Viennese institution since 1873. Merri and I always enjoy a sidewalk Grosser Brauner with Apple Strudel mit Schlag. We are in good company there! Landtmann has hosted regulars over the years such as: Peter Altenberg, Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Max Reinhardt, Marlene Dietrich, Romy Schneider, Burt Lancaster, Hans Moser, the Dutch Queen Juliane and Sir Paul McCartney.

For more information about how to use ENR Asset Management to bank with Valartis Bank in Vienna contact Thomas Fischer at Thomas@enrasset.com

There are always things we do not know, but one of the safest ways to gain profit and avoid loss is to follow value, which at this time is in European shares.

The nature of value investing is to be contrary. Markets rise and fall, long term, guided by forces of nature. Markets jump up and down, short term, based on the human whims of fear and greed. Hot markets are almost always overbought and severely corrected markets are almost always oversold. This makes contrarian investing really simple. All you need to do is what most investors are not. Right?

Nothing in investing is ever simple. Doing whatever the majority of the market is not doing may expose you to good value stocks, but this process also reveals troubled companies. Good value selectivity is also required to create an effective contrarian strategy. Contrarian investors need tactics that weed out the dogs from the good value.

The margin of safety the fund seeks is low price, low debt, high cash-flow, strong global brands and strong management.

The fund’s managers look for ‘event-driven’ change; spinoffs and macro catalysts that lead to change and revaluation. For example shares in oil companies are being revalued now.

The fund only invests in stocks that pay dividends, have growth greater than inflation and are near or at 52-week low prices.

The fund diversifies currencies for profit potential and to reduce risk. During the 2008 financial crisis when the Morgan Stanley Capital Index (MSCI) World Index was down 42%, the MSCI Europe Africa Far East (EAFE) down 44% and the S&P 500 Index down 40%, the ENR Contrarian Global Fund only fell 10.5%.

To help you develop your own plan that can take advantage of falling share prices and a strong greenback, we are sharing access to five ENR International Investing Conference Calls by Eric Roseman and Thomas Fischer of ENR Asset Management. The conference calls were conducted January 12 and 13, 2015. They are available to hear by phone for 30 days. Each call reviews a different type of portfolio management.

You, as a Gary Scott reader, can listen in free until the recordings expire. Last Saturday we began by looking at a low risk portfolio strategy.

Today we are sharing a Global Contrarian Income strategy.

Eric Roseman and Thomas Fischer are my investment advisers at ENR Asset Management. ENR is the access route to an investment account with Jyske Bank. Merri and I are sponsoring two Multi Currency Asset Allocation seminars with ENR so you can meet Eric and Thomas.

You are invited to meet them first via these conference calls. Join in at no cost as a Gary Scott reader.

Call 905-694-9451 or 1-800-408-3053 and use the Global Contrarian Income passcode: 622419947 #

Click below to see the Power Point Presentation. This is an excellent review and handy to have available as you listen to the Global Contrarian Income call.

Warren Buffet clarified the purpose of being contrary when he stated that it is incorrect thinking to believe that buying a business or stock is an intelligent purchase simply because it is unpopular. A contrarian approach is just as foolish as a follow-the-crowd strategy if it is not applied with thought. Being contrary exposes you to stocks that are more likely to have value. Combine a contrary attitude with a good value plan and your chances for safety and profit grow.

Gary

Global Earnings Seminar

How to Have Peace & Profit in 2019

There are still ways to reduce stress.

Prolonged exposure to stress is the # 1 root of death and disease in our modern world.

Stress can ruin your health and wealth… in many ways.

Daily stress has been magnified because we no control, no way out of the current global political and economic mess. The news makes current problems feel like things are getting worse.

The health problems lead to economic problems from loss of income, poor investment decisions and high disease management costs.

Yet there is a way back.

I was reminded of this once when I made a horrible mistake.

The supposed error? Letting my mind wander six decades back to an hour I spent with a girl.

Learn from this near disaster, seven most powerful sources of wealth, health, security and fulfillment in this era.

The girl was pretty and blond. Terry was her name. My imagination spanned decades returning to my Oregon roots seeing her as if she were there.

We were 11 or 12 and had known each other since we started Rockwood grade school. Just buddies, our non-romantic friendship lasted 12 years, from first grade till high school’s end. Then she went off to Pepperdine College in California. I started traveling the world. Never saw her again. I hope her life has gone well. But until that reflection I’d never thought much of Terry in so many years.

What could have been the tragic error was letting that memory touch my heart. Two kids, walking on a crisp, Pacific Northwest autumnal afternoon.

We walked down a sun filled, pine needle covered, dirt path. Huge, fat, green Douglas firs lined the road. Traffic was no problem, not many cars. Crossing Stark Street we turned left, hiking three blocks to 182nd. There we passed an old clapboard candy store. I can still hear the wooden sidewalk of that store slap beneath my feet, felt the soggy planks sag and smelled astringent pitch from the fir trees. Then we turned right, up 182nd for about a mile. There was Terry’s house.

I carried on, walking through a big field, waist high grass turned straw brown by an early frost. There were dozens of paths made by who knows what. Animals perhaps or countless generations of other kids walking home alone from school. I chose one following it to another wood of tall, rough-barked fir. Crossing one more field, I climbed a rock wall, struggled through a barbed wire fence (my Mom hated that fence ripping my jeans). I was home!

Sweet simplicity, that dream. Two kids holding hands, walking on a dirt trail under a crisp, but blue, sunny sky. Pure innocence.

My tragic error was looking back. I returned to Rockwood, Oregon with Merri and my kids to show them this part of their roots. Following the route, Terry and I had walked were the candy store, grange hall, old wooden buildings and their home spun honesty and charm.

Instead we found six lanes of fast, frantic traffic and road rage. McDonalds, KFC, strip shopping centers. The car radio blared warnings of local gangs and drive-by-shootings.

How can our kids walk in places like this? How can we return to those old feeling of security and comfort?

How can any of us possibly keep pace in this world that’s moving so fast?

Then something inside snapped.

“There has to be an answer for honest, hard working folks to enjoy the wonderful opportunities of today and regain what we’ve lost over the past forty years”, I swore to myself.

How can we keep up, without having such a fast paced life we turn into machines? Where do we find time for God, family, charity, and our friends? How can we rediscover those sun filled, pine needle covered, dirt paths we want to walk?

“There has to be places that are still innocent and pure”, I thought. “There has to be a way of life that does not pound us with stress”.

This thinking led me to begin reviewing the thousands of economic and business experiences I have shared with readers over the decades.

This started a search for a simpler way of life and a better place to earn and protect our wealth.

By digging, asking and observing, traveling and talking to investors and investment managers all over the world I found that there are true paths to real security in the here and now. That knowledge helped me develop courses on how to have natural health, everlasting wealth and purposeful investments.

This knowledge helped Merri and me invest in stocks and real estate all over the world. It helped us find and develop our farms in North Carolina and Florida into sanctuaries.

That almost error led us to create an entire portfolio of information on how to keep pace, get ahead, enjoy our modern society but, to enjoy life wherever you choose without having to move too fast.

This is why I am making a special “Let’s get our lives back” offer.

“What would you think in the last 30 seconds of your life if you were the richest man in the world but were unhappy?”

This quote is from the opening slide of our Value Investing Seminar, “How to Secure Your Future With a Value Breakout Plan”. This a vital question because few investors think about the value of comfort and happiness. Yet the truth is, those who are comfortable and happy with their investments are most likely to succeed financially.

Without comfort, no matter how much money a person has, they are more likely to lose it or kill themselves with stress from worry.

There is a way to have the perfect form of financial security.

Let’s call it the perfect pension. To help understand how to build an unshakable economic platform, here is Part One of the report, The Pruppie Factor.

The Pruppie Factor – Seven Steps to Comfortable Living & Profits.

“May you live in interesting times”. That’s a Chinese curse that seems to have been cast on our modern world. We can enjoy comfort and profits in the year ahead despite this fact.

Become a Pruppie. Integrate your earning with your investing and enjoy peak living, everlasting wealth and natural health with PIEC Investing in the year ahead.

Before we look at what PIEC means, let’s delve into Pruppieism, the new economic and social realism. Pruppies expect everything to expand. They take advantage of every new benefit and technology they can. Pruppies enjoy using the fruits of our ancestor’s deliberations and labors to earn in this advanced technological world. They also engage in activity that they love that would sustain them in case society and the incredibly intricate weave of our global economy and society should fail.

Pruppies are prepared in case everything, everywhere, or at least everything relating to their income and savings fails and the fabric that surrounds their lives disintegrates into an unknown veil. Yet a Pruppie’s preparation is not a sacrifice, but a joy as you will see.

Hope springs eternal and it should. One of the key themes in my first book, Passport to International Profit, (published in the 1970s) was “The Sun Always Shines Somewhere”. This thought has been in and remains a foundation of everything I do.

Sometimes this sunshine is hard to see because the press always focuses on doom and gloom. Current news often makes the world seem about to end. We cannot blame the press. Bad news sells. The majority seem to want to worry instead of learn about all that’s good. This does not make doom and gloom right. This is why the majority are also the rich portion of the population, but bad news is an economic fact for the press.

Yet despite all the negative headlines, we have lived through the Cold War and MAD, Y2K, GridX II, the Peak Oil Crisis, the recession of the 1970s, 1980s 2007, etc. etc. etc. Chicken Little is always out there, selling the falling sky. Don’t buy into this story!

History suggests that there will always be opportunity. The sun always shines somewhere.

Brexit, global warming and the American political process are examples of how the press gravitates to negative news. The press make anything and just about everything seem negative. This can blind us to the positive realities ahead, if we let it.

Don’t.

Expect that the world will remain standing and look for opportunity instead!

Our wealth and economic opportunity is pushed by supply and demand. We are part of a growing global population. New technology makes more people, as a whole, more productive every day. The world has increasingly larger markets creating more supply in increasingly efficient ways.

This reality increases everyone’s wealth. Yes there is a lot of bad news in many places. There is inequality. There is crime. There is war and hate and injustice. Despite these negatives there is even more that is positive. Opportunity grows.

Pruppies tap into and use every bit of the good news they can. They have a plan B if everything goes wrong, but Plan B is based on something a Pruppie wants to do we love, not just a shelter from bad news.

At the end of this report, you’ll find a special offer that can help you integrate earning and investing for the ultimate form of profit and safety.

Imagine this example of Pruppism. The Tiffany lamp casts an amber glow, rich, ivory and warm in the grey gloom of early dusk. The gold knobbed mahogany desk, its deep patina waxed and smooth, shines with reflections of ancient leather Chesterfields stuffed full, but rumpled with age and of maritime shots that hang in brass frames on the wall. The room speaks of settled tradition, the kind that might never end. But thoughts instead are on the demise of the business that has supported this room.

The late Jim Slater of Slater Walker, a British industrial conglomerate turned bank in the 1970s was in that room. I recall his bank’s collapse well as I was living in Hong Kong and Slater Walker was a huge going concern in what was a British colony in those days. The Slater Walker crash was big news that unsettled the entire British banking system at the time.

Slater, the founder, had been a really high roller, using every modern banking tactic available including buying many assets with cheap loans. Then in the mid 1970s banking crisis interest rates skyrocketed and his bank was unable to refinance its debt. The company failed and Slater had to resign. Numerous charges were brought against him and he spent considerable time defending what he had done.

In the end he was only fined a nominal sum but despite this, his banking career was well and truly dead.

However he had already moved on.

He wrote about this in his autobiography, “Return To Go”. He had always had a hobby making puppet shows and telling stories to his children, so instead of banking, he turned his passion into profit and wrote some children’s books. His first effort sold a respectable 35,000 copies. His next a monster series for younger children, became a huge hit.

He had also maintained a hobby of salmon fishing so again turned his passion into profit by creating a business that bought up fishing rights and resold them as time-shares. He had quite a success.

Some day a catastrophe beyond our control could redirect the course of our lives. We might lose a job, learn that our pension won’t pay or that our dollars won’t buy as much as they must.

Though Jim Slater was a banker, outside economic forces beyond his control caused his business disaster. Yet he had options because he had been doing things he loved that were not related to his banking, but could become useful income generators in difficult time.

I do not know if Slater understood Pruppism but that’s what he was practicing.

Pruppism is a positive realism based on the knowledge that much of our lives are directed by events that we do not know or expect and could not change them even if we did. There is always something we do not know and that’s okay.

Years ago I was speaking at an investing seminar in Marbella Spain. One of the speakers was a brilliant strategist, Johan Peter Paludan, of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. This institute has a large interdisciplinary staff with expertise in economics, political science, ethnography, psychology, engineering, PR and sociology. They identify and analyze global trends that influence the future. Paludan was speaking of these trends and answering questions that delegates had about the world’s economic future.

One delegate asked what to do if there was a global nuclear exchange. Paludan replied that the results of some events are so unpredictable that it is not worth trying to plan for them.

This thought has stuck with me for decades because it helped me realize that no matter how cautious, how defensive and careful we are, there are events that we cannot even imagine that can turn our lives upside down, for the good or bad. With this in mind my wife Merri and I have created a lifestyle where we turn our passions into profit but in a way that whatever happens we are likely to be in a position to spot the positive and the opportunity.

A PIEC Experience

Pruppies gain the benefits of PIEC wealth. PIEC is an acronym for “Personal Income Earning Corridor”. PIEC income and wealth come from doing what you do for love, rather than just the money.

Traditionally people get jobs to create income. They work to live and support their lifestyle while attempting to spend less than they earn. They hope, that maybe the savings will bring, sometime in the future, a lifestyle of doing something enjoyable without work.

Pruppies reverse the priorities. Instead of working for money to save and invest, they focus their prime effort on doing something they enjoy right now. Then they learn how to enjoy the effort in some profitable way. They learn to create “Avenues of Abundance” that combine lifestyle with the necessary task of accumulating wealth.

If economic circumstances tie them to an existing income effort, they create hobbies that are income producers of the future.

For example, if a Pruppie loves golf; instead of working six days a week, 50 weeks a year just to golf on Sundays and during short vacations, instead he or she will create a business in some aspect of the golfing trade.

In another example, a client of mine, who loved animals became a vet. But he learned that the vet’s lifestyle was not one he enjoyed. He wanted to travel and move around, which is difficult for a professional who needs to stay at his office and build a practice. So he built a business that prepares special animal foods for race horses. Now he travels globally visiting horse breeders and makes much more money as well.

Pruppies combine money with time, energy and desires. They generate income doing something desired. Desire and fulfillment become at least as, if not more, important as the money.

#1: Do What You Love!

The reason PIECs work well is that when we love to do something, we do it better, for longer and with greater enthusiasm.

Effort, determination and tenacity are wealth building attributes that cannot fail. Yet Pruppism does not mean we should suddenly abandon our jobs and try becoming golf pros, when we have never been able to break 100. Smart Pruppies start small and gradually expand into their passion.

For example, as a writer and lecturer, I was never fully satisfied sitting behind a desk or standing on a podium all day long, even though I was making over a million bucks a year. I’m the physical, outdoors type and yearned for exercise and the wilds of the deep woods. “What good’s the money if this isn’t fun?” I often asked myself.

Rather than quit writing and teaching, I looked for ways to combine these professions with the outdoor life. Through research I learned that many city folk like myself yearn to be in the primitive outdoors. So I bought an isolated farm high in the Blue Ridge Mountains and an Andean plantation high in Ecuador where I developed seminar centers with charming but simple dwellings, set in rustic surroundings, with clean water and pure air. Now I live in nature so after I finish the writing or talking, I can walk in the woods or take my axe and chop firewood or something physical. I’ve combined my writing with physical work and have blended the life I want, with my readers’ needs in a way that makes great financial sense.

We built a series of cabins in the wild that bring more profits than most stocks or bonds could ever return.

The process took six years to shift. Now we have been at this for nearly two decades and we are far from finished. But while doing what we love, who cares? This is one of the great benefits of PIEC investing. We can slow down and enjoy the work instead of always rushing ahead, looking for something more.

Those who work nine to five can start PIEC businesses part time if they are too uneasy to quit their jobs. Others, who like myself, already have a business can slowly shift their product or service in a sensible way and let it evolve toward their PIEC.

But where do we start?

There is a seven step process we can all use whether we have our own careers, a business or even if we are retired (PIEC investing is especially good for retired folks who have found the supposed good life flat or financially short).

The first step is to get a clear idea or vision of our dream. This is sometimes harder to achieve than it seems. We are so deluged with false ideals from Washington, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, etc. that we have to stop and really take stock. What do we sincerely want?

There is a very practical economic reason to look inwards for wealth. Warren Buffet recommends that we only invest in what we understand. What can we understand better than ourselves?

This inner search will lead us to an ideal that begins the second step which is gaining enthusiasm. How can we be anything but enthusiastic about finally fulfilling our deepest dreams? The enthusiasm leads to the third step; gaining an education.

We need to find out everything we can about our idea. To succeed we must take the third step and become real experts in the product or service we offer.

Fourth, this educational process allows us to develop an intelligent, focused business plan we can act upon and the action is the fifth step which brings us the experience. Experience gives us the sixth step, a financial loss or profit. We always profit in increased knowledge which creates the seventh step, more ideas.

Then the entire cycle starts all over again: Idea, Enthusiasm, Education, Action, Experience, Financial Profit and New Ideas.

This is a way to keep adding new opportunities into our lives. Business is rarely static. It is an ever evolving process instead.

This seven step cycle may take days, weeks, months or years, but the moment you begin you’ll start moving into an avenue of affluence where you love your work so though money isn’t your main goal it comes more easily.

#2: Do what you love, but also be of service. Do something for others that is meaningful and important to you.

We all have a purpose in life and when we are filling it, we feel fulfilled. Wealth and fulfillment is the goal. Fulfillment is important because of the law of diminishing returns. A 2008 study that analyzed Gallup surveys of 450,000 Americans suggested that day-to-day contentment improves until income hits around $75,000 per annum. After that, more money just brings more stuff, with far less gain in happiness. Income beyond $75,000 does not do much for a person’s daily mood.

This is a pretty general study and regional differences in costs, inflation and life circumstances will create many fluctuations from this norm, but the point is when money is the main goal, the better you get, the harder it will be to gain satisfaction.

Giving, on the other hand, never has limitations, especially when the giving helps complete a purpose that is part of our destiny.

This is true in business and investing. A study of investors for example found that investors with socially responsible ideals gained the best returns. A dual goal of profit and achieving some social benefit provides a purpose beyond returns. This brings comfort and determination to the investments and the added stick-to-it-ness helps increase profits.

The study helped define three aspects of investing that are generally ignored, purpose and habits.

Purpose. Purpose requires some soul-searching questions about what we each want our life to be. This purpose is more important than the investment goal. The purpose of the money we have becomes more important than the amount in the portfolio.

Habits. Habits come next because we need to create habits and routines that keep us on the path of our unique purpose. The marketplace does all it can to distract us from our goals. There is an endless stream of news, rumor, conjecture, facts figures, ideas and tactics generated by every part of every stock market aimed at getting us to act in ways that benefit the agenda of others.

Good habits help us avoid being distracted from what we are meant and want to do. Good habits muffle the noise of Madison Avenue, the spin from Washington DC and the hidden agendas of big business. These are among the most powerful ways to increase wealth. Having greater fulfillment as well as more wealth is a bonus that Pruppies call “Everlasting Wealth”.

#3: Integrate your earning and investing.

Long term success in business and investing are determined by control and comfort.

Comfort comes from feeling in control, but since there is always something we do not know, real comfort comes from knowing that we are serving a valuable purpose, the best we can, regardless of how events unfold.

Real comfort helps maintain determination, dedication and enthusiasm, all among the most vital parts in the process of succeeding in investing and business.

Our own business increases comfort because a business is simply an investment that gives us more control due to the addition of our own time and energy.

A Personal Income Earning Corridor (PIEC) begin with a main income generator that we control. For some this is a job with a salary. For others it is a pension. For many it is their own business using the concepts of SNAP (Small Niche Area Publishing).

Here’s why self publishing offers such great potential.

Sam Walton… or is it Warren Buffet? Self publishing is based on three cherished beliefs that two of the wealthiest people in the world, Sam Walton and Warren Buffet, shared.

Buffet and Walton shared several cherished business beliefs that you can gain from a special writing and publishing business that is at its very beginning stage.

Cherished Belief #1: Small is Beautiful. Both Sam Walton (Bentonville, Arkansas) and Warren Buffet (Omaha, Nebraska) chose America’s heartland away from the big cities as their homes. What’s more, Walton chose to do business in these small places as well… building the largest retail operation in the world almost entirely in small towns.

Warren Buffet believes that potential in small towns offers special value. He believes this so strongly that he has been buying newspapers in small towns.

Over the last few years Berkshire Hathaway purchased 63 small and mid-sized daily and weekly newspapers throughout the United States.

He plans to buy more and says: “I like buying individual papers at the right prices.”

Buffet stated that Berkshire is not buying big newspapers or more newspaper shares. He is sticking with small publications because he believes in the value of local communities.

Cherished Belief #2: Community Orientation.

Buffet is not buying big publications but is grabbing up small community focused publications.

His bet is that publications focused on local communities can withstand the shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet.

The individual papers can be really small as 10,000 circulation with tiny staffs.

He said no one has stopped reading “half-way through a story that was about them or their neighbors.”

He also noted, “Berkshire buys for keeps. I’d rather buy newspapers myself directly,” and is seeking papers that publish in cities and towns with a “Sense of Community.”

From this vision WalMart remains committed not just to expanding the businesses but to improving the communities.

You can enjoy all these benefits through Self publishingbecause small communities can be places, ideas or ideas within places.

The factors that makes publications like this successful are its common interests. Common interest can be focused on a geographical area or a niche idea that targets a niche of a larger market. For example, the market for truckers is quite large, but trackers that look after their health is a much smaller niche. One benefit of SNAP publishing is it surrounds you with people who have a common interest, so your readers are like-minded souls.

Cherished Belief #3: Seek Good Value.

Sam Walton built one of the largest fortunes in the world… with the simple goals of providing great value and great customer service. Warren Buffett’s belief is that the essence of value investing is buying stocks at less than their intrinsic value. The discount is called the “Margin of Safety”.

Both Buffet and Walton shared a vision that small towns ignored by the mainstream offered good value. You can tap into extra profit potential as a SNAP publisher who helps a small community.

Knowing BOTH successful niche magazine publishers and internet marketing geniuses is important for a reason that Buffet outlined to his publishers when he purchased their papers. Buffet believes that small newspapers will change and that they serve an important purpose. He said, “Papers must rethink the industry’s initial response to the Internet as focus on continuing to maintain a strong sense of community“.

His bet is that publications focused on local communities can withstand the shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet. Buffet has said that giving news away free online is “unsustainable” and has sought papers that publish in cities and towns with a “sense of community.”

We have never seen this need for a sense of community as we do know because community creates trust. As the world has expanded on big is better, the public has lost trust. We no longer trust big business, big government, big hospitals, big banks, etc. Yet publications offer nothing if they do not have the reader’s trust. Internet publishing on the big scale has reduced trust. Anyone can say anything on the internet and thus internet information is highly suspect. Publishers who use a small niche to create trust have an advantage.

To begin this introduction let me add one more point and outline the value of what I am about to offer. A SNAP publication may eventually require $5,000, $10,000 or even $15,000 in start up costs but can make up to $11,835 a month… or more. That’s value… plain and simple.

Join The International Club for all of 2018 NOW. Learn how to wrote and publish. Save $418.78.

Club members start by receiving seven workshops and courses on how to earn everywhere with home micro businesses. We call this our “Live Well and Free Anywhere Program”. The program contains a series of courses and reports that show ways to earn and be free. These courses and reports are:

Club members also learn ways to be be healthier and have more energy. I have created three natural health reports about:

#1: Nutrition

#2: Purification

#3: Exercise

Recent news about Social Security, pensions and health care shows that the US government has excessive debt today and that we as individuals need tactics to make sure, when governments, pensions and insurers weasel out of their promises, that we can take care of ourselves.

One big broken promise is Social Security and Medicare. The most recent Social Security trustee report shows that the programs will begin to spend more than they earn within just three or four years. The Medicare hospital-insurance trust fund, could use all its reserves by 2028. They face insolvency over the next 20 years because Social Security runs totally out of money by 2034.

My three natural health reports help learn ways to be happier, healthier and avoid much of the Western disease management (aka healthcare) expense.

Each report is available for $19.95. However you’ll receive all three FREE as club member and save $59.85.

Next, club members participate in an intensive program called the Purposeful Investing Course (Pi). The purpose of Pi is finding value investments that increase safety and profit. Learn Slow, Worry Free, Good Value Investing.

Stress, worry and fear are three of an investor’s worst enemies. These destroyers of wealth can create a Behavior Gap, that causes investors to underperform in any market good or bad. The behavior gap is created by natural human responses to fear. Pi helps create profitable strategies that avoid losses from this gap.

Lessons from Pi are based on the creation and management of numerous Model Portfolios, called Pifolio.

We combine the research of several brilliant mathematicians and money managers with my years of investing experience.

There are no secrets about this portfolio except that these mathematicians ignore the stories from economic news (often created by someone with vested interests) and is based mainly on good math that reveals the truth through financial news.

The Pifolio is a theoretical portfolio of MSCI Country Benchmark Index ETFs that cover all the good value markets using my 50 years of global experience and my study of the analysis of four mathematical investing geniuses (and friends).

This is a complete and continual study of what to do about the movement of international major and emerging stock markets. I want to share this study throughout the next year with you.

This analysis forms the basis of a Good Value Stock Market Strategy. The analysis is rational, mathematical and does not worry about short term ups and downs. This strategy is easy for anyone to follow and use. Pi reveals the best value markets and provides contacts to managers and analysts and Country Index ETFs so almost anyone can create and follow their own strategy.

The costs are low and this type of ETF is one of the hardest for institutions to cheat. Expense ratios for most ETFs are lower than those of the average mutual fund. Little knowledge, time, management or guesswork are required. The investment is simply a diversified portfolio of good value indices. Investments in an index are like investments in all the shares of a good value market.

Pi opens insights to numerous long term cycles that most investors miss because they have not been investing long enough to see them.

The Pi subscription is normally $299 per annum but as a club member you receive Pi at no charge and save an additional $299.

There are two more reports I’ll send about the most exciting opportunities I have seen since we started sending our reports on international investing ideas more than three decades ago. The trends are so clear that I created a short, but powerful report “Three Currency Patterns for 50% Profits or More.” This report shows how to earn an extra 50% from currency shifts with even small investments. I kept the report short and simple, but included links to 153 pages of Good Value Stock Market research and Asset Allocation Analysis.

The report shows 20 good value investments and a really powerful tactic that shows the most effective and least expensive way to accumulate these bargains in large or even very small amounts (less than $5,000). There is extra profit potential of at least 50% so the report is worth a lot.

This report sells for $29.95 but when you become an International Club member you’ll receive the report, “Three Currency Patterns For 50% Profits or More” FREE.

Plus get the $39.99 report, “The Silver Dip 2019” free.

With investors watching global stock markets bounce up and down, many missed two really important profit generating events over the past two years. The price of silver dipped below $14 an ounce as did shares of the iShares Silver ETF (SLV). The second event is that the silver gold ratio hit 80 and has remained near this level, compared to a range of the 230s only two years ago.

These two events are a strong sign to invest in precious metals.

I prepared a special report “Silver Dip 2019” updated in late 2018. The report explained the exact conditions you need to make leveraged silver & gold speculations that can increase the returns in a safe portfolio by as much as eight times. The purpose of the report is to share long term lessons about speculating in precious metals gained through 30 years of speculating and investing in gold and silver.

The price of silver may offer special value later in 2019, but the price of platinum is special now. So I want to send you the report “Platinum Dip 2019”.

Save $418.78… when you become a club member.

Join the International Club and receive:

#1: The $299 “Live Well and Free Anywhere Program including SNAP”. Free.

There is great opportunity in medium risk portfolios during high risk times. This last week Merri and I received 100 fresh Ecuadorian Roses.

We took them to Mount Dora and decorated the seminar room at the Lakeside Inn where we had a full house for our Super Thinking + Spanish course.

While conducting the course, a lot happened in Switzerland, Russia and Ecuador. Many readers sent email like this: Gary, What did you think of what happened with Putin yesterday and the Swiss stock market today? Yowza!

My reply was that while doing seminars I am focused on helping the attendees rather than what’s in the news. I was was not even aware of events until the morning after.

Evidence strongly suggests that we are in the final stages of long term bear market and we believe that markets are looking for a reason for the market to fall for one more serious correction in this bear. My expectation is that we’ll see one final correction in the market before the next long term bull begins. Events in Switzerland or in Russia are related to low oil prices may be triggers that cause stocks to drop in price. However, these events are not the reason for the contraction.

Ignore short terms ups and downs. Create a long term strategy that seeks value regardless of short term volatility.

To help you develop your own plan that takes advantage of falling share prices and a strong greenback, we are sharing access to five ENR International Investing conference calls by Eric Roseman and Thomas Fischer of ENR Asset Management. The calls were recorded last week. Each call reviews of different types of portfolio and as a Gary Scott reader, you can listen in free. Last Saturday we began by looking at a low risk portfolio strategy.

Today we are sharing a medium risk strategy.

Eric Roseman and Thomas Fischer are my investment advisers at ENR Asset Management. ENR is the access route to an investment account with Jyske Bank. Merri and I are sponsoring two Multi Currency Asset Allocation seminars with ENR so you can meet Eric and Thomas.

You are invited to meet them first via these conference calls. Join in at no cost as a Gary Scott reader.

The health problems lead to economic problems from loss of income, poor investment decisions and high disease management costs.

Yet there is a way back.

I was reminded of this once when I made a horrible mistake.

The supposed error? Letting my mind wander six decades back to an hour I spent with a girl.

Learn from this near disaster, seven most powerful sources of wealth, health, security and fulfillment in this era.

The girl was pretty and blond. Terry was her name. My imagination spanned decades returning to my Oregon roots seeing her as if she were there.

We were 11 or 12 and had known each other since we started Rockwood grade school. Just buddies, our non-romantic friendship lasted 12 years, from first grade till high school’s end. Then she went off to Pepperdine College in California. I started traveling the world. Never saw her again. I hope her life has gone well. But until that reflection I’d never thought much of Terry in so many years.

What could have been the tragic error was letting that memory touch my heart. Two kids, walking on a crisp, Pacific Northwest autumnal afternoon.

We walked down a sun filled, pine needle covered, dirt path. Huge, fat, green Douglas firs lined the road. Traffic was no problem, not many cars. Crossing Stark Street we turned left, hiking three blocks to 182nd. There we passed an old clapboard candy store. I can still hear the wooden sidewalk of that store slap beneath my feet, felt the soggy planks sag and smelled astringent pitch from the fir trees. Then we turned right, up 182nd for about a mile. There was Terry’s house.

I carried on, walking through a big field, waist high grass turned straw brown by an early frost. There were dozens of paths made by who knows what. Animals perhaps or countless generations of other kids walking home alone from school. I chose one following it to another wood of tall, rough-barked fir. Crossing one more field, I climbed a rock wall, struggled through a barbed wire fence (my Mom hated that fence ripping my jeans). I was home!

Sweet simplicity, that dream. Two kids holding hands, walking on a dirt trail under a crisp, but blue, sunny sky. Pure innocence.

My tragic error was looking back. I returned to Rockwood, Oregon with Merri and my kids to show them this part of their roots. Following the route, Terry and I had walked were the candy store, grange hall, old wooden buildings and their home spun honesty and charm.

Instead we found six lanes of fast, frantic traffic and road rage. McDonalds, KFC, strip shopping centers. The car radio blared warnings of local gangs and drive-by-shootings.

How can our kids walk in places like this? How can we return to those old feeling of security and comfort?

How can any of us possibly keep pace in this world that’s moving so fast?

Then something inside snapped.

“There has to be an answer for honest, hard working folks to enjoy the wonderful opportunities of today and regain what we’ve lost over the past forty years”, I swore to myself.

How can we keep up, without having such a fast paced life we turn into machines? Where do we find time for God, family, charity, and our friends? How can we rediscover those sun filled, pine needle covered, dirt paths we want to walk?

“There has to be places that are still innocent and pure”, I thought. “There has to be a way of life that does not pound us with stress”.

This thinking led me to begin reviewing the thousands of economic and business experiences I have shared with readers over the decades.

This started a search for a simpler way of life and a better place to earn and protect our wealth.

By digging, asking and observing, traveling and talking to investors and investment managers all over the world I found that there are true paths to real security in the here and now. That knowledge helped me develop courses on how to have natural health, everlasting wealth and purposeful investments.

This knowledge helped Merri and me invest in stocks and real estate all over the world. It helped us find and develop our farms in North Carolina and Florida into sanctuaries.

That almost error led us to create an entire portfolio of information on how to keep pace, get ahead, enjoy our modern society but, to enjoy life wherever you choose without having to move too fast.

This is why I am making a special “Let’s get our lives back” offer.

“What would you think in the last 30 seconds of your life if you were the richest man in the world but were unhappy?”

This quote is from the opening slide of our Value Investing Seminar, “How to Secure Your Future With a Value Breakout Plan”. This a vital question because few investors think about the value of comfort and happiness. Yet the truth is, those who are comfortable and happy with their investments are most likely to succeed financially.

Without comfort, no matter how much money a person has, they are more likely to lose it or kill themselves with stress from worry.

There is a way to have the perfect form of financial security.

Let’s call it the perfect pension. To help understand how to build an unshakable economic platform, here is Part One of the report, The Pruppie Factor.

The Pruppie Factor – Seven Steps to Comfortable Living & Profits.

“May you live in interesting times”. That’s a Chinese curse that seems to have been cast on our modern world. We can enjoy comfort and profits in the year ahead despite this fact.

Become a Pruppie. Integrate your earning with your investing and enjoy peak living, everlasting wealth and natural health with PIEC Investing in the year ahead.

Before we look at what PIEC means, let’s delve into Pruppieism, the new economic and social realism. Pruppies expect everything to expand. They take advantage of every new benefit and technology they can. Pruppies enjoy using the fruits of our ancestor’s deliberations and labors to earn in this advanced technological world. They also engage in activity that they love that would sustain them in case society and the incredibly intricate weave of our global economy and society should fail.

Pruppies are prepared in case everything, everywhere, or at least everything relating to their income and savings fails and the fabric that surrounds their lives disintegrates into an unknown veil. Yet a Pruppie’s preparation is not a sacrifice, but a joy as you will see.

Hope springs eternal and it should. One of the key themes in my first book, Passport to International Profit, (published in the 1970s) was “The Sun Always Shines Somewhere”. This thought has been in and remains a foundation of everything I do.

Sometimes this sunshine is hard to see because the press always focuses on doom and gloom. Current news often makes the world seem about to end. We cannot blame the press. Bad news sells. The majority seem to want to worry instead of learn about all that’s good. This does not make doom and gloom right. This is why the majority are also the rich portion of the population, but bad news is an economic fact for the press.

Yet despite all the negative headlines, we have lived through the Cold War and MAD, Y2K, GridX II, the Peak Oil Crisis, the recession of the 1970s, 1980s 2007, etc. etc. etc. Chicken Little is always out there, selling the falling sky. Don’t buy into this story!

History suggests that there will always be opportunity. The sun always shines somewhere.

Brexit, global warming and the American political process are examples of how the press gravitates to negative news. The press make anything and just about everything seem negative. This can blind us to the positive realities ahead, if we let it.

Don’t.

Expect that the world will remain standing and look for opportunity instead!

Our wealth and economic opportunity is pushed by supply and demand. We are part of a growing global population. New technology makes more people, as a whole, more productive every day. The world has increasingly larger markets creating more supply in increasingly efficient ways.

This reality increases everyone’s wealth. Yes there is a lot of bad news in many places. There is inequality. There is crime. There is war and hate and injustice. Despite these negatives there is even more that is positive. Opportunity grows.

Pruppies tap into and use every bit of the good news they can. They have a plan B if everything goes wrong, but Plan B is based on something a Pruppie wants to do we love, not just a shelter from bad news.

At the end of this report, you’ll find a special offer that can help you integrate earning and investing for the ultimate form of profit and safety.

Imagine this example of Pruppism. The Tiffany lamp casts an amber glow, rich, ivory and warm in the grey gloom of early dusk. The gold knobbed mahogany desk, its deep patina waxed and smooth, shines with reflections of ancient leather Chesterfields stuffed full, but rumpled with age and of maritime shots that hang in brass frames on the wall. The room speaks of settled tradition, the kind that might never end. But thoughts instead are on the demise of the business that has supported this room.

The late Jim Slater of Slater Walker, a British industrial conglomerate turned bank in the 1970s was in that room. I recall his bank’s collapse well as I was living in Hong Kong and Slater Walker was a huge going concern in what was a British colony in those days. The Slater Walker crash was big news that unsettled the entire British banking system at the time.

Slater, the founder, had been a really high roller, using every modern banking tactic available including buying many assets with cheap loans. Then in the mid 1970s banking crisis interest rates skyrocketed and his bank was unable to refinance its debt. The company failed and Slater had to resign. Numerous charges were brought against him and he spent considerable time defending what he had done.

In the end he was only fined a nominal sum but despite this, his banking career was well and truly dead.

However he had already moved on.

He wrote about this in his autobiography, “Return To Go”. He had always had a hobby making puppet shows and telling stories to his children, so instead of banking, he turned his passion into profit and wrote some children’s books. His first effort sold a respectable 35,000 copies. His next a monster series for younger children, became a huge hit.

He had also maintained a hobby of salmon fishing so again turned his passion into profit by creating a business that bought up fishing rights and resold them as time-shares. He had quite a success.

Some day a catastrophe beyond our control could redirect the course of our lives. We might lose a job, learn that our pension won’t pay or that our dollars won’t buy as much as they must.

Though Jim Slater was a banker, outside economic forces beyond his control caused his business disaster. Yet he had options because he had been doing things he loved that were not related to his banking, but could become useful income generators in difficult time.

I do not know if Slater understood Pruppism but that’s what he was practicing.

Pruppism is a positive realism based on the knowledge that much of our lives are directed by events that we do not know or expect and could not change them even if we did. There is always something we do not know and that’s okay.

Years ago I was speaking at an investing seminar in Marbella Spain. One of the speakers was a brilliant strategist, Johan Peter Paludan, of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. This institute has a large interdisciplinary staff with expertise in economics, political science, ethnography, psychology, engineering, PR and sociology. They identify and analyze global trends that influence the future. Paludan was speaking of these trends and answering questions that delegates had about the world’s economic future.

One delegate asked what to do if there was a global nuclear exchange. Paludan replied that the results of some events are so unpredictable that it is not worth trying to plan for them.

This thought has stuck with me for decades because it helped me realize that no matter how cautious, how defensive and careful we are, there are events that we cannot even imagine that can turn our lives upside down, for the good or bad. With this in mind my wife Merri and I have created a lifestyle where we turn our passions into profit but in a way that whatever happens we are likely to be in a position to spot the positive and the opportunity.

A PIEC Experience

Pruppies gain the benefits of PIEC wealth. PIEC is an acronym for “Personal Income Earning Corridor”. PIEC income and wealth come from doing what you do for love, rather than just the money.

Traditionally people get jobs to create income. They work to live and support their lifestyle while attempting to spend less than they earn. They hope, that maybe the savings will bring, sometime in the future, a lifestyle of doing something enjoyable without work.

Pruppies reverse the priorities. Instead of working for money to save and invest, they focus their prime effort on doing something they enjoy right now. Then they learn how to enjoy the effort in some profitable way. They learn to create “Avenues of Abundance” that combine lifestyle with the necessary task of accumulating wealth.

If economic circumstances tie them to an existing income effort, they create hobbies that are income producers of the future.

For example, if a Pruppie loves golf; instead of working six days a week, 50 weeks a year just to golf on Sundays and during short vacations, instead he or she will create a business in some aspect of the golfing trade.

In another example, a client of mine, who loved animals became a vet. But he learned that the vet’s lifestyle was not one he enjoyed. He wanted to travel and move around, which is difficult for a professional who needs to stay at his office and build a practice. So he built a business that prepares special animal foods for race horses. Now he travels globally visiting horse breeders and makes much more money as well.

Pruppies combine money with time, energy and desires. They generate income doing something desired. Desire and fulfillment become at least as, if not more, important as the money.

#1: Do What You Love!

The reason PIECs work well is that when we love to do something, we do it better, for longer and with greater enthusiasm.

Effort, determination and tenacity are wealth building attributes that cannot fail. Yet Pruppism does not mean we should suddenly abandon our jobs and try becoming golf pros, when we have never been able to break 100. Smart Pruppies start small and gradually expand into their passion.

For example, as a writer and lecturer, I was never fully satisfied sitting behind a desk or standing on a podium all day long, even though I was making over a million bucks a year. I’m the physical, outdoors type and yearned for exercise and the wilds of the deep woods. “What good’s the money if this isn’t fun?” I often asked myself.

Rather than quit writing and teaching, I looked for ways to combine these professions with the outdoor life. Through research I learned that many city folk like myself yearn to be in the primitive outdoors. So I bought an isolated farm high in the Blue Ridge Mountains and an Andean plantation high in Ecuador where I developed seminar centers with charming but simple dwellings, set in rustic surroundings, with clean water and pure air. Now I live in nature so after I finish the writing or talking, I can walk in the woods or take my axe and chop firewood or something physical. I’ve combined my writing with physical work and have blended the life I want, with my readers’ needs in a way that makes great financial sense.

We built a series of cabins in the wild that bring more profits than most stocks or bonds could ever return.

The process took six years to shift. Now we have been at this for nearly two decades and we are far from finished. But while doing what we love, who cares? This is one of the great benefits of PIEC investing. We can slow down and enjoy the work instead of always rushing ahead, looking for something more.

Those who work nine to five can start PIEC businesses part time if they are too uneasy to quit their jobs. Others, who like myself, already have a business can slowly shift their product or service in a sensible way and let it evolve toward their PIEC.

But where do we start?

There is a seven step process we can all use whether we have our own careers, a business or even if we are retired (PIEC investing is especially good for retired folks who have found the supposed good life flat or financially short).

The first step is to get a clear idea or vision of our dream. This is sometimes harder to achieve than it seems. We are so deluged with false ideals from Washington, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, etc. that we have to stop and really take stock. What do we sincerely want?

There is a very practical economic reason to look inwards for wealth. Warren Buffet recommends that we only invest in what we understand. What can we understand better than ourselves?

This inner search will lead us to an ideal that begins the second step which is gaining enthusiasm. How can we be anything but enthusiastic about finally fulfilling our deepest dreams? The enthusiasm leads to the third step; gaining an education.

We need to find out everything we can about our idea. To succeed we must take the third step and become real experts in the product or service we offer.

Fourth, this educational process allows us to develop an intelligent, focused business plan we can act upon and the action is the fifth step which brings us the experience. Experience gives us the sixth step, a financial loss or profit. We always profit in increased knowledge which creates the seventh step, more ideas.

Then the entire cycle starts all over again: Idea, Enthusiasm, Education, Action, Experience, Financial Profit and New Ideas.

This is a way to keep adding new opportunities into our lives. Business is rarely static. It is an ever evolving process instead.

This seven step cycle may take days, weeks, months or years, but the moment you begin you’ll start moving into an avenue of affluence where you love your work so though money isn’t your main goal it comes more easily.

#2: Do what you love, but also be of service. Do something for others that is meaningful and important to you.

We all have a purpose in life and when we are filling it, we feel fulfilled. Wealth and fulfillment is the goal. Fulfillment is important because of the law of diminishing returns. A 2008 study that analyzed Gallup surveys of 450,000 Americans suggested that day-to-day contentment improves until income hits around $75,000 per annum. After that, more money just brings more stuff, with far less gain in happiness. Income beyond $75,000 does not do much for a person’s daily mood.

This is a pretty general study and regional differences in costs, inflation and life circumstances will create many fluctuations from this norm, but the point is when money is the main goal, the better you get, the harder it will be to gain satisfaction.

Giving, on the other hand, never has limitations, especially when the giving helps complete a purpose that is part of our destiny.

This is true in business and investing. A study of investors for example found that investors with socially responsible ideals gained the best returns. A dual goal of profit and achieving some social benefit provides a purpose beyond returns. This brings comfort and determination to the investments and the added stick-to-it-ness helps increase profits.

The study helped define three aspects of investing that are generally ignored, purpose and habits.

Purpose. Purpose requires some soul-searching questions about what we each want our life to be. This purpose is more important than the investment goal. The purpose of the money we have becomes more important than the amount in the portfolio.

Habits. Habits come next because we need to create habits and routines that keep us on the path of our unique purpose. The marketplace does all it can to distract us from our goals. There is an endless stream of news, rumor, conjecture, facts figures, ideas and tactics generated by every part of every stock market aimed at getting us to act in ways that benefit the agenda of others.

Good habits help us avoid being distracted from what we are meant and want to do. Good habits muffle the noise of Madison Avenue, the spin from Washington DC and the hidden agendas of big business. These are among the most powerful ways to increase wealth. Having greater fulfillment as well as more wealth is a bonus that Pruppies call “Everlasting Wealth”.

#3: Integrate your earning and investing.

Long term success in business and investing are determined by control and comfort.

Comfort comes from feeling in control, but since there is always something we do not know, real comfort comes from knowing that we are serving a valuable purpose, the best we can, regardless of how events unfold.

Real comfort helps maintain determination, dedication and enthusiasm, all among the most vital parts in the process of succeeding in investing and business.

Our own business increases comfort because a business is simply an investment that gives us more control due to the addition of our own time and energy.

A Personal Income Earning Corridor (PIEC) begin with a main income generator that we control. For some this is a job with a salary. For others it is a pension. For many it is their own business using the concepts of SNAP (Small Niche Area Publishing).

Here’s why self publishing offers such great potential.

Sam Walton… or is it Warren Buffet? Self publishing is based on three cherished beliefs that two of the wealthiest people in the world, Sam Walton and Warren Buffet, shared.

Buffet and Walton shared several cherished business beliefs that you can gain from a special writing and publishing business that is at its very beginning stage.

Cherished Belief #1: Small is Beautiful. Both Sam Walton (Bentonville, Arkansas) and Warren Buffet (Omaha, Nebraska) chose America’s heartland away from the big cities as their homes. What’s more, Walton chose to do business in these small places as well… building the largest retail operation in the world almost entirely in small towns.

Warren Buffet believes that potential in small towns offers special value. He believes this so strongly that he has been buying newspapers in small towns.

Over the last few years Berkshire Hathaway purchased 63 small and mid-sized daily and weekly newspapers throughout the United States.

He plans to buy more and says: “I like buying individual papers at the right prices.”

Buffet stated that Berkshire is not buying big newspapers or more newspaper shares. He is sticking with small publications because he believes in the value of local communities.

Cherished Belief #2: Community Orientation.

Buffet is not buying big publications but is grabbing up small community focused publications.

His bet is that publications focused on local communities can withstand the shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet.

The individual papers can be really small as 10,000 circulation with tiny staffs.

He said no one has stopped reading “half-way through a story that was about them or their neighbors.”

He also noted, “Berkshire buys for keeps. I’d rather buy newspapers myself directly,” and is seeking papers that publish in cities and towns with a “Sense of Community.”

From this vision WalMart remains committed not just to expanding the businesses but to improving the communities.

You can enjoy all these benefits through Self publishingbecause small communities can be places, ideas or ideas within places.

The factors that makes publications like this successful are its common interests. Common interest can be focused on a geographical area or a niche idea that targets a niche of a larger market. For example, the market for truckers is quite large, but trackers that look after their health is a much smaller niche. One benefit of SNAP publishing is it surrounds you with people who have a common interest, so your readers are like-minded souls.

Cherished Belief #3: Seek Good Value.

Sam Walton built one of the largest fortunes in the world… with the simple goals of providing great value and great customer service. Warren Buffett’s belief is that the essence of value investing is buying stocks at less than their intrinsic value. The discount is called the “Margin of Safety”.

Both Buffet and Walton shared a vision that small towns ignored by the mainstream offered good value. You can tap into extra profit potential as a SNAP publisher who helps a small community.

Knowing BOTH successful niche magazine publishers and internet marketing geniuses is important for a reason that Buffet outlined to his publishers when he purchased their papers. Buffet believes that small newspapers will change and that they serve an important purpose. He said, “Papers must rethink the industry’s initial response to the Internet as focus on continuing to maintain a strong sense of community“.

His bet is that publications focused on local communities can withstand the shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet. Buffet has said that giving news away free online is “unsustainable” and has sought papers that publish in cities and towns with a “sense of community.”

We have never seen this need for a sense of community as we do know because community creates trust. As the world has expanded on big is better, the public has lost trust. We no longer trust big business, big government, big hospitals, big banks, etc. Yet publications offer nothing if they do not have the reader’s trust. Internet publishing on the big scale has reduced trust. Anyone can say anything on the internet and thus internet information is highly suspect. Publishers who use a small niche to create trust have an advantage.

To begin this introduction let me add one more point and outline the value of what I am about to offer. A SNAP publication may eventually require $5,000, $10,000 or even $15,000 in start up costs but can make up to $11,835 a month… or more. That’s value… plain and simple.

Join The International Club for all of 2018 NOW. Learn how to wrote and publish. Save $418.78.

Club members start by receiving seven workshops and courses on how to earn everywhere with home micro businesses. We call this our “Live Well and Free Anywhere Program”. The program contains a series of courses and reports that show ways to earn and be free. These courses and reports are:

Club members also learn ways to be be healthier and have more energy. I have created three natural health reports about:

#1: Nutrition

#2: Purification

#3: Exercise

Recent news about Social Security, pensions and health care shows that the US government has excessive debt today and that we as individuals need tactics to make sure, when governments, pensions and insurers weasel out of their promises, that we can take care of ourselves.

One big broken promise is Social Security and Medicare. The most recent Social Security trustee report shows that the programs will begin to spend more than they earn within just three or four years. The Medicare hospital-insurance trust fund, could use all its reserves by 2028. They face insolvency over the next 20 years because Social Security runs totally out of money by 2034.

My three natural health reports help learn ways to be happier, healthier and avoid much of the Western disease management (aka healthcare) expense.

Each report is available for $19.95. However you’ll receive all three FREE as club member and save $59.85.

Next, club members participate in an intensive program called the Purposeful Investing Course (Pi). The purpose of Pi is finding value investments that increase safety and profit. Learn Slow, Worry Free, Good Value Investing.

Stress, worry and fear are three of an investor’s worst enemies. These destroyers of wealth can create a Behavior Gap, that causes investors to underperform in any market good or bad. The behavior gap is created by natural human responses to fear. Pi helps create profitable strategies that avoid losses from this gap.

Lessons from Pi are based on the creation and management of numerous Model Portfolios, called Pifolio.

We combine the research of several brilliant mathematicians and money managers with my years of investing experience.

There are no secrets about this portfolio except that these mathematicians ignore the stories from economic news (often created by someone with vested interests) and is based mainly on good math that reveals the truth through financial news.

The Pifolio is a theoretical portfolio of MSCI Country Benchmark Index ETFs that cover all the good value markets using my 50 years of global experience and my study of the analysis of four mathematical investing geniuses (and friends).

This is a complete and continual study of what to do about the movement of international major and emerging stock markets. I want to share this study throughout the next year with you.

This analysis forms the basis of a Good Value Stock Market Strategy. The analysis is rational, mathematical and does not worry about short term ups and downs. This strategy is easy for anyone to follow and use. Pi reveals the best value markets and provides contacts to managers and analysts and Country Index ETFs so almost anyone can create and follow their own strategy.

The costs are low and this type of ETF is one of the hardest for institutions to cheat. Expense ratios for most ETFs are lower than those of the average mutual fund. Little knowledge, time, management or guesswork are required. The investment is simply a diversified portfolio of good value indices. Investments in an index are like investments in all the shares of a good value market.

Pi opens insights to numerous long term cycles that most investors miss because they have not been investing long enough to see them.

The Pi subscription is normally $299 per annum but as a club member you receive Pi at no charge and save an additional $299.

There are two more reports I’ll send about the most exciting opportunities I have seen since we started sending our reports on international investing ideas more than three decades ago. The trends are so clear that I created a short, but powerful report “Three Currency Patterns for 50% Profits or More.” This report shows how to earn an extra 50% from currency shifts with even small investments. I kept the report short and simple, but included links to 153 pages of Good Value Stock Market research and Asset Allocation Analysis.

The report shows 20 good value investments and a really powerful tactic that shows the most effective and least expensive way to accumulate these bargains in large or even very small amounts (less than $5,000). There is extra profit potential of at least 50% so the report is worth a lot.

This report sells for $29.95 but when you become an International Club member you’ll receive the report, “Three Currency Patterns For 50% Profits or More” FREE.

Plus get the $39.99 report, “The Silver Dip 2019” free.

With investors watching global stock markets bounce up and down, many missed two really important profit generating events over the past two years. The price of silver dipped below $14 an ounce as did shares of the iShares Silver ETF (SLV). The second event is that the silver gold ratio hit 80 and has remained near this level, compared to a range of the 230s only two years ago.

These two events are a strong sign to invest in precious metals.

I prepared a special report “Silver Dip 2019” updated in late 2018. The report explained the exact conditions you need to make leveraged silver & gold speculations that can increase the returns in a safe portfolio by as much as eight times. The purpose of the report is to share long term lessons about speculating in precious metals gained through 30 years of speculating and investing in gold and silver.

The price of silver may offer special value later in 2019, but the price of platinum is special now. So I want to send you the report “Platinum Dip 2019”.

Save $418.78… when you become a club member.

Join the International Club and receive:

#1: The $299 “Live Well and Free Anywhere Program including SNAP”. Free.

The first rule of value investing is to reduce risk. You are invited to join Eric Roseman CEO of ENR Asset Management and Thomas Fischer in an Asset Allocation conference call at no charge.

Gary Scott meeting staff at Jyske Bank’s Silkeborg headquarters.

Over the next two weeks we’ll share access to five conference calls. Each call reviews of different types of portfolio and as a Gary Scott reader, you can listen in free. Today I begin with the low risk portfolio for two reasons.

The first reason is Warren Buffet’s rules #1 and 2 of value investing: The first rule is not to lose. The second rule is not to forget the first rule.

The second reason is that you have to take extra care that your banker or investment adviser is really looking after your interests.

Last week’s Wall Street Journal article “Forex probe finds new signs of potential wrong doing” says: Banks and traders that figured the worst was over in the foreign-exchange scandal are facing an unpleasant surprise. Investigations into attempted manipulation of the vast currencies markets have uncovered new signs of potential wrongdoing, sparking a fresh round of firings by Wall Street banks and snaring new financial institutions. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc., which settled some U.S. and British investigations last year, both recently have fired or suspended foreign-exchange employees based in part on materials turned up by a continuing U.S. Justice Department investigation, according to people familiar with the matter. J.P. Morgan on Wednesday set aside an additional $990 million to pay for investigations and other legal expenses, while its chief executive complained about being “under assault” from regulators.

The recent post at this site “The Optimistic Cynic” explains how most of the big banks and brokers have been actually creating bad products to sell to customers so they can bet against what they advise. The root of this problem is that most big financial institutions pay bonuses based on the institution’s, not the client’s, profits. This creates a conflict of interest between the employees and the investors they serve. That article outlines how Jyske Bank is different and does not pay bonuses to employees.

Eric Roseman and Thomas Fischer are my investment advisers at ENR Asset Management. ENR is the access route to an investment account with Jyske Bank. Merri and I are sponsoring two Multi Currency Asset Allocation seminars with ENR so you can meet Eric and Thomas.

You are invited to meet them first via these conference calls. Join in at no cost as a Gary Scott reader.

The health problems lead to economic problems from loss of income, poor investment decisions and high disease management costs.

Yet there is a way back.

I was reminded of this once when I made a horrible mistake.

The supposed error? Letting my mind wander six decades back to an hour I spent with a girl.

Learn from this near disaster, seven most powerful sources of wealth, health, security and fulfillment in this era.

The girl was pretty and blond. Terry was her name. My imagination spanned decades returning to my Oregon roots seeing her as if she were there.

We were 11 or 12 and had known each other since we started Rockwood grade school. Just buddies, our non-romantic friendship lasted 12 years, from first grade till high school’s end. Then she went off to Pepperdine College in California. I started traveling the world. Never saw her again. I hope her life has gone well. But until that reflection I’d never thought much of Terry in so many years.

What could have been the tragic error was letting that memory touch my heart. Two kids, walking on a crisp, Pacific Northwest autumnal afternoon.

We walked down a sun filled, pine needle covered, dirt path. Huge, fat, green Douglas firs lined the road. Traffic was no problem, not many cars. Crossing Stark Street we turned left, hiking three blocks to 182nd. There we passed an old clapboard candy store. I can still hear the wooden sidewalk of that store slap beneath my feet, felt the soggy planks sag and smelled astringent pitch from the fir trees. Then we turned right, up 182nd for about a mile. There was Terry’s house.

I carried on, walking through a big field, waist high grass turned straw brown by an early frost. There were dozens of paths made by who knows what. Animals perhaps or countless generations of other kids walking home alone from school. I chose one following it to another wood of tall, rough-barked fir. Crossing one more field, I climbed a rock wall, struggled through a barbed wire fence (my Mom hated that fence ripping my jeans). I was home!

Sweet simplicity, that dream. Two kids holding hands, walking on a dirt trail under a crisp, but blue, sunny sky. Pure innocence.

My tragic error was looking back. I returned to Rockwood, Oregon with Merri and my kids to show them this part of their roots. Following the route, Terry and I had walked were the candy store, grange hall, old wooden buildings and their home spun honesty and charm.

Instead we found six lanes of fast, frantic traffic and road rage. McDonalds, KFC, strip shopping centers. The car radio blared warnings of local gangs and drive-by-shootings.

How can our kids walk in places like this? How can we return to those old feeling of security and comfort?

How can any of us possibly keep pace in this world that’s moving so fast?

Then something inside snapped.

“There has to be an answer for honest, hard working folks to enjoy the wonderful opportunities of today and regain what we’ve lost over the past forty years”, I swore to myself.

How can we keep up, without having such a fast paced life we turn into machines? Where do we find time for God, family, charity, and our friends? How can we rediscover those sun filled, pine needle covered, dirt paths we want to walk?

“There has to be places that are still innocent and pure”, I thought. “There has to be a way of life that does not pound us with stress”.

This thinking led me to begin reviewing the thousands of economic and business experiences I have shared with readers over the decades.

This started a search for a simpler way of life and a better place to earn and protect our wealth.

By digging, asking and observing, traveling and talking to investors and investment managers all over the world I found that there are true paths to real security in the here and now. That knowledge helped me develop courses on how to have natural health, everlasting wealth and purposeful investments.

This knowledge helped Merri and me invest in stocks and real estate all over the world. It helped us find and develop our farms in North Carolina and Florida into sanctuaries.

That almost error led us to create an entire portfolio of information on how to keep pace, get ahead, enjoy our modern society but, to enjoy life wherever you choose without having to move too fast.

This is why I am making a special “Let’s get our lives back” offer.

“What would you think in the last 30 seconds of your life if you were the richest man in the world but were unhappy?”

This quote is from the opening slide of our Value Investing Seminar, “How to Secure Your Future With a Value Breakout Plan”. This a vital question because few investors think about the value of comfort and happiness. Yet the truth is, those who are comfortable and happy with their investments are most likely to succeed financially.

Without comfort, no matter how much money a person has, they are more likely to lose it or kill themselves with stress from worry.

There is a way to have the perfect form of financial security.

Let’s call it the perfect pension. To help understand how to build an unshakable economic platform, here is Part One of the report, The Pruppie Factor.

The Pruppie Factor – Seven Steps to Comfortable Living & Profits.

“May you live in interesting times”. That’s a Chinese curse that seems to have been cast on our modern world. We can enjoy comfort and profits in the year ahead despite this fact.

Become a Pruppie. Integrate your earning with your investing and enjoy peak living, everlasting wealth and natural health with PIEC Investing in the year ahead.

Before we look at what PIEC means, let’s delve into Pruppieism, the new economic and social realism. Pruppies expect everything to expand. They take advantage of every new benefit and technology they can. Pruppies enjoy using the fruits of our ancestor’s deliberations and labors to earn in this advanced technological world. They also engage in activity that they love that would sustain them in case society and the incredibly intricate weave of our global economy and society should fail.

Pruppies are prepared in case everything, everywhere, or at least everything relating to their income and savings fails and the fabric that surrounds their lives disintegrates into an unknown veil. Yet a Pruppie’s preparation is not a sacrifice, but a joy as you will see.

Hope springs eternal and it should. One of the key themes in my first book, Passport to International Profit, (published in the 1970s) was “The Sun Always Shines Somewhere”. This thought has been in and remains a foundation of everything I do.

Sometimes this sunshine is hard to see because the press always focuses on doom and gloom. Current news often makes the world seem about to end. We cannot blame the press. Bad news sells. The majority seem to want to worry instead of learn about all that’s good. This does not make doom and gloom right. This is why the majority are also the rich portion of the population, but bad news is an economic fact for the press.

Yet despite all the negative headlines, we have lived through the Cold War and MAD, Y2K, GridX II, the Peak Oil Crisis, the recession of the 1970s, 1980s 2007, etc. etc. etc. Chicken Little is always out there, selling the falling sky. Don’t buy into this story!

History suggests that there will always be opportunity. The sun always shines somewhere.

Brexit, global warming and the American political process are examples of how the press gravitates to negative news. The press make anything and just about everything seem negative. This can blind us to the positive realities ahead, if we let it.

Don’t.

Expect that the world will remain standing and look for opportunity instead!

Our wealth and economic opportunity is pushed by supply and demand. We are part of a growing global population. New technology makes more people, as a whole, more productive every day. The world has increasingly larger markets creating more supply in increasingly efficient ways.

This reality increases everyone’s wealth. Yes there is a lot of bad news in many places. There is inequality. There is crime. There is war and hate and injustice. Despite these negatives there is even more that is positive. Opportunity grows.

Pruppies tap into and use every bit of the good news they can. They have a plan B if everything goes wrong, but Plan B is based on something a Pruppie wants to do we love, not just a shelter from bad news.

At the end of this report, you’ll find a special offer that can help you integrate earning and investing for the ultimate form of profit and safety.

Imagine this example of Pruppism. The Tiffany lamp casts an amber glow, rich, ivory and warm in the grey gloom of early dusk. The gold knobbed mahogany desk, its deep patina waxed and smooth, shines with reflections of ancient leather Chesterfields stuffed full, but rumpled with age and of maritime shots that hang in brass frames on the wall. The room speaks of settled tradition, the kind that might never end. But thoughts instead are on the demise of the business that has supported this room.

The late Jim Slater of Slater Walker, a British industrial conglomerate turned bank in the 1970s was in that room. I recall his bank’s collapse well as I was living in Hong Kong and Slater Walker was a huge going concern in what was a British colony in those days. The Slater Walker crash was big news that unsettled the entire British banking system at the time.

Slater, the founder, had been a really high roller, using every modern banking tactic available including buying many assets with cheap loans. Then in the mid 1970s banking crisis interest rates skyrocketed and his bank was unable to refinance its debt. The company failed and Slater had to resign. Numerous charges were brought against him and he spent considerable time defending what he had done.

In the end he was only fined a nominal sum but despite this, his banking career was well and truly dead.

However he had already moved on.

He wrote about this in his autobiography, “Return To Go”. He had always had a hobby making puppet shows and telling stories to his children, so instead of banking, he turned his passion into profit and wrote some children’s books. His first effort sold a respectable 35,000 copies. His next a monster series for younger children, became a huge hit.

He had also maintained a hobby of salmon fishing so again turned his passion into profit by creating a business that bought up fishing rights and resold them as time-shares. He had quite a success.

Some day a catastrophe beyond our control could redirect the course of our lives. We might lose a job, learn that our pension won’t pay or that our dollars won’t buy as much as they must.

Though Jim Slater was a banker, outside economic forces beyond his control caused his business disaster. Yet he had options because he had been doing things he loved that were not related to his banking, but could become useful income generators in difficult time.

I do not know if Slater understood Pruppism but that’s what he was practicing.

Pruppism is a positive realism based on the knowledge that much of our lives are directed by events that we do not know or expect and could not change them even if we did. There is always something we do not know and that’s okay.

Years ago I was speaking at an investing seminar in Marbella Spain. One of the speakers was a brilliant strategist, Johan Peter Paludan, of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. This institute has a large interdisciplinary staff with expertise in economics, political science, ethnography, psychology, engineering, PR and sociology. They identify and analyze global trends that influence the future. Paludan was speaking of these trends and answering questions that delegates had about the world’s economic future.

One delegate asked what to do if there was a global nuclear exchange. Paludan replied that the results of some events are so unpredictable that it is not worth trying to plan for them.

This thought has stuck with me for decades because it helped me realize that no matter how cautious, how defensive and careful we are, there are events that we cannot even imagine that can turn our lives upside down, for the good or bad. With this in mind my wife Merri and I have created a lifestyle where we turn our passions into profit but in a way that whatever happens we are likely to be in a position to spot the positive and the opportunity.

A PIEC Experience

Pruppies gain the benefits of PIEC wealth. PIEC is an acronym for “Personal Income Earning Corridor”. PIEC income and wealth come from doing what you do for love, rather than just the money.

Traditionally people get jobs to create income. They work to live and support their lifestyle while attempting to spend less than they earn. They hope, that maybe the savings will bring, sometime in the future, a lifestyle of doing something enjoyable without work.

Pruppies reverse the priorities. Instead of working for money to save and invest, they focus their prime effort on doing something they enjoy right now. Then they learn how to enjoy the effort in some profitable way. They learn to create “Avenues of Abundance” that combine lifestyle with the necessary task of accumulating wealth.

If economic circumstances tie them to an existing income effort, they create hobbies that are income producers of the future.

For example, if a Pruppie loves golf; instead of working six days a week, 50 weeks a year just to golf on Sundays and during short vacations, instead he or she will create a business in some aspect of the golfing trade.

In another example, a client of mine, who loved animals became a vet. But he learned that the vet’s lifestyle was not one he enjoyed. He wanted to travel and move around, which is difficult for a professional who needs to stay at his office and build a practice. So he built a business that prepares special animal foods for race horses. Now he travels globally visiting horse breeders and makes much more money as well.

Pruppies combine money with time, energy and desires. They generate income doing something desired. Desire and fulfillment become at least as, if not more, important as the money.

#1: Do What You Love!

The reason PIECs work well is that when we love to do something, we do it better, for longer and with greater enthusiasm.

Effort, determination and tenacity are wealth building attributes that cannot fail. Yet Pruppism does not mean we should suddenly abandon our jobs and try becoming golf pros, when we have never been able to break 100. Smart Pruppies start small and gradually expand into their passion.

For example, as a writer and lecturer, I was never fully satisfied sitting behind a desk or standing on a podium all day long, even though I was making over a million bucks a year. I’m the physical, outdoors type and yearned for exercise and the wilds of the deep woods. “What good’s the money if this isn’t fun?” I often asked myself.

Rather than quit writing and teaching, I looked for ways to combine these professions with the outdoor life. Through research I learned that many city folk like myself yearn to be in the primitive outdoors. So I bought an isolated farm high in the Blue Ridge Mountains and an Andean plantation high in Ecuador where I developed seminar centers with charming but simple dwellings, set in rustic surroundings, with clean water and pure air. Now I live in nature so after I finish the writing or talking, I can walk in the woods or take my axe and chop firewood or something physical. I’ve combined my writing with physical work and have blended the life I want, with my readers’ needs in a way that makes great financial sense.

We built a series of cabins in the wild that bring more profits than most stocks or bonds could ever return.

The process took six years to shift. Now we have been at this for nearly two decades and we are far from finished. But while doing what we love, who cares? This is one of the great benefits of PIEC investing. We can slow down and enjoy the work instead of always rushing ahead, looking for something more.

Those who work nine to five can start PIEC businesses part time if they are too uneasy to quit their jobs. Others, who like myself, already have a business can slowly shift their product or service in a sensible way and let it evolve toward their PIEC.

But where do we start?

There is a seven step process we can all use whether we have our own careers, a business or even if we are retired (PIEC investing is especially good for retired folks who have found the supposed good life flat or financially short).

The first step is to get a clear idea or vision of our dream. This is sometimes harder to achieve than it seems. We are so deluged with false ideals from Washington, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, etc. that we have to stop and really take stock. What do we sincerely want?

There is a very practical economic reason to look inwards for wealth. Warren Buffet recommends that we only invest in what we understand. What can we understand better than ourselves?

This inner search will lead us to an ideal that begins the second step which is gaining enthusiasm. How can we be anything but enthusiastic about finally fulfilling our deepest dreams? The enthusiasm leads to the third step; gaining an education.

We need to find out everything we can about our idea. To succeed we must take the third step and become real experts in the product or service we offer.

Fourth, this educational process allows us to develop an intelligent, focused business plan we can act upon and the action is the fifth step which brings us the experience. Experience gives us the sixth step, a financial loss or profit. We always profit in increased knowledge which creates the seventh step, more ideas.

Then the entire cycle starts all over again: Idea, Enthusiasm, Education, Action, Experience, Financial Profit and New Ideas.

This is a way to keep adding new opportunities into our lives. Business is rarely static. It is an ever evolving process instead.

This seven step cycle may take days, weeks, months or years, but the moment you begin you’ll start moving into an avenue of affluence where you love your work so though money isn’t your main goal it comes more easily.

#2: Do what you love, but also be of service. Do something for others that is meaningful and important to you.

We all have a purpose in life and when we are filling it, we feel fulfilled. Wealth and fulfillment is the goal. Fulfillment is important because of the law of diminishing returns. A 2008 study that analyzed Gallup surveys of 450,000 Americans suggested that day-to-day contentment improves until income hits around $75,000 per annum. After that, more money just brings more stuff, with far less gain in happiness. Income beyond $75,000 does not do much for a person’s daily mood.

This is a pretty general study and regional differences in costs, inflation and life circumstances will create many fluctuations from this norm, but the point is when money is the main goal, the better you get, the harder it will be to gain satisfaction.

Giving, on the other hand, never has limitations, especially when the giving helps complete a purpose that is part of our destiny.

This is true in business and investing. A study of investors for example found that investors with socially responsible ideals gained the best returns. A dual goal of profit and achieving some social benefit provides a purpose beyond returns. This brings comfort and determination to the investments and the added stick-to-it-ness helps increase profits.

The study helped define three aspects of investing that are generally ignored, purpose and habits.

Purpose. Purpose requires some soul-searching questions about what we each want our life to be. This purpose is more important than the investment goal. The purpose of the money we have becomes more important than the amount in the portfolio.

Habits. Habits come next because we need to create habits and routines that keep us on the path of our unique purpose. The marketplace does all it can to distract us from our goals. There is an endless stream of news, rumor, conjecture, facts figures, ideas and tactics generated by every part of every stock market aimed at getting us to act in ways that benefit the agenda of others.

Good habits help us avoid being distracted from what we are meant and want to do. Good habits muffle the noise of Madison Avenue, the spin from Washington DC and the hidden agendas of big business. These are among the most powerful ways to increase wealth. Having greater fulfillment as well as more wealth is a bonus that Pruppies call “Everlasting Wealth”.

#3: Integrate your earning and investing.

Long term success in business and investing are determined by control and comfort.

Comfort comes from feeling in control, but since there is always something we do not know, real comfort comes from knowing that we are serving a valuable purpose, the best we can, regardless of how events unfold.

Real comfort helps maintain determination, dedication and enthusiasm, all among the most vital parts in the process of succeeding in investing and business.

Our own business increases comfort because a business is simply an investment that gives us more control due to the addition of our own time and energy.

A Personal Income Earning Corridor (PIEC) begin with a main income generator that we control. For some this is a job with a salary. For others it is a pension. For many it is their own business using the concepts of SNAP (Small Niche Area Publishing).

Here’s why self publishing offers such great potential.

Sam Walton… or is it Warren Buffet? Self publishing is based on three cherished beliefs that two of the wealthiest people in the world, Sam Walton and Warren Buffet, shared.

Buffet and Walton shared several cherished business beliefs that you can gain from a special writing and publishing business that is at its very beginning stage.

Cherished Belief #1: Small is Beautiful. Both Sam Walton (Bentonville, Arkansas) and Warren Buffet (Omaha, Nebraska) chose America’s heartland away from the big cities as their homes. What’s more, Walton chose to do business in these small places as well… building the largest retail operation in the world almost entirely in small towns.

Warren Buffet believes that potential in small towns offers special value. He believes this so strongly that he has been buying newspapers in small towns.

Over the last few years Berkshire Hathaway purchased 63 small and mid-sized daily and weekly newspapers throughout the United States.

He plans to buy more and says: “I like buying individual papers at the right prices.”

Buffet stated that Berkshire is not buying big newspapers or more newspaper shares. He is sticking with small publications because he believes in the value of local communities.

Cherished Belief #2: Community Orientation.

Buffet is not buying big publications but is grabbing up small community focused publications.

His bet is that publications focused on local communities can withstand the shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet.

The individual papers can be really small as 10,000 circulation with tiny staffs.

He said no one has stopped reading “half-way through a story that was about them or their neighbors.”

He also noted, “Berkshire buys for keeps. I’d rather buy newspapers myself directly,” and is seeking papers that publish in cities and towns with a “Sense of Community.”

From this vision WalMart remains committed not just to expanding the businesses but to improving the communities.

You can enjoy all these benefits through Self publishingbecause small communities can be places, ideas or ideas within places.

The factors that makes publications like this successful are its common interests. Common interest can be focused on a geographical area or a niche idea that targets a niche of a larger market. For example, the market for truckers is quite large, but trackers that look after their health is a much smaller niche. One benefit of SNAP publishing is it surrounds you with people who have a common interest, so your readers are like-minded souls.

Cherished Belief #3: Seek Good Value.

Sam Walton built one of the largest fortunes in the world… with the simple goals of providing great value and great customer service. Warren Buffett’s belief is that the essence of value investing is buying stocks at less than their intrinsic value. The discount is called the “Margin of Safety”.

Both Buffet and Walton shared a vision that small towns ignored by the mainstream offered good value. You can tap into extra profit potential as a SNAP publisher who helps a small community.

Knowing BOTH successful niche magazine publishers and internet marketing geniuses is important for a reason that Buffet outlined to his publishers when he purchased their papers. Buffet believes that small newspapers will change and that they serve an important purpose. He said, “Papers must rethink the industry’s initial response to the Internet as focus on continuing to maintain a strong sense of community“.

His bet is that publications focused on local communities can withstand the shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet. Buffet has said that giving news away free online is “unsustainable” and has sought papers that publish in cities and towns with a “sense of community.”

We have never seen this need for a sense of community as we do know because community creates trust. As the world has expanded on big is better, the public has lost trust. We no longer trust big business, big government, big hospitals, big banks, etc. Yet publications offer nothing if they do not have the reader’s trust. Internet publishing on the big scale has reduced trust. Anyone can say anything on the internet and thus internet information is highly suspect. Publishers who use a small niche to create trust have an advantage.

To begin this introduction let me add one more point and outline the value of what I am about to offer. A SNAP publication may eventually require $5,000, $10,000 or even $15,000 in start up costs but can make up to $11,835 a month… or more. That’s value… plain and simple.

Join The International Club for all of 2018 NOW. Learn how to wrote and publish. Save $418.78.

Club members start by receiving seven workshops and courses on how to earn everywhere with home micro businesses. We call this our “Live Well and Free Anywhere Program”. The program contains a series of courses and reports that show ways to earn and be free. These courses and reports are:

Club members also learn ways to be be healthier and have more energy. I have created three natural health reports about:

#1: Nutrition

#2: Purification

#3: Exercise

Recent news about Social Security, pensions and health care shows that the US government has excessive debt today and that we as individuals need tactics to make sure, when governments, pensions and insurers weasel out of their promises, that we can take care of ourselves.

One big broken promise is Social Security and Medicare. The most recent Social Security trustee report shows that the programs will begin to spend more than they earn within just three or four years. The Medicare hospital-insurance trust fund, could use all its reserves by 2028. They face insolvency over the next 20 years because Social Security runs totally out of money by 2034.

My three natural health reports help learn ways to be happier, healthier and avoid much of the Western disease management (aka healthcare) expense.

Each report is available for $19.95. However you’ll receive all three FREE as club member and save $59.85.

Next, club members participate in an intensive program called the Purposeful Investing Course (Pi). The purpose of Pi is finding value investments that increase safety and profit. Learn Slow, Worry Free, Good Value Investing.

Stress, worry and fear are three of an investor’s worst enemies. These destroyers of wealth can create a Behavior Gap, that causes investors to underperform in any market good or bad. The behavior gap is created by natural human responses to fear. Pi helps create profitable strategies that avoid losses from this gap.

Lessons from Pi are based on the creation and management of numerous Model Portfolios, called Pifolio.

We combine the research of several brilliant mathematicians and money managers with my years of investing experience.

There are no secrets about this portfolio except that these mathematicians ignore the stories from economic news (often created by someone with vested interests) and is based mainly on good math that reveals the truth through financial news.

The Pifolio is a theoretical portfolio of MSCI Country Benchmark Index ETFs that cover all the good value markets using my 50 years of global experience and my study of the analysis of four mathematical investing geniuses (and friends).

This is a complete and continual study of what to do about the movement of international major and emerging stock markets. I want to share this study throughout the next year with you.

This analysis forms the basis of a Good Value Stock Market Strategy. The analysis is rational, mathematical and does not worry about short term ups and downs. This strategy is easy for anyone to follow and use. Pi reveals the best value markets and provides contacts to managers and analysts and Country Index ETFs so almost anyone can create and follow their own strategy.

The costs are low and this type of ETF is one of the hardest for institutions to cheat. Expense ratios for most ETFs are lower than those of the average mutual fund. Little knowledge, time, management or guesswork are required. The investment is simply a diversified portfolio of good value indices. Investments in an index are like investments in all the shares of a good value market.

Pi opens insights to numerous long term cycles that most investors miss because they have not been investing long enough to see them.

The Pi subscription is normally $299 per annum but as a club member you receive Pi at no charge and save an additional $299.

There are two more reports I’ll send about the most exciting opportunities I have seen since we started sending our reports on international investing ideas more than three decades ago. The trends are so clear that I created a short, but powerful report “Three Currency Patterns for 50% Profits or More.” This report shows how to earn an extra 50% from currency shifts with even small investments. I kept the report short and simple, but included links to 153 pages of Good Value Stock Market research and Asset Allocation Analysis.

The report shows 20 good value investments and a really powerful tactic that shows the most effective and least expensive way to accumulate these bargains in large or even very small amounts (less than $5,000). There is extra profit potential of at least 50% so the report is worth a lot.

This report sells for $29.95 but when you become an International Club member you’ll receive the report, “Three Currency Patterns For 50% Profits or More” FREE.

Plus get the $39.99 report, “The Silver Dip 2019” free.

With investors watching global stock markets bounce up and down, many missed two really important profit generating events over the past two years. The price of silver dipped below $14 an ounce as did shares of the iShares Silver ETF (SLV). The second event is that the silver gold ratio hit 80 and has remained near this level, compared to a range of the 230s only two years ago.

These two events are a strong sign to invest in precious metals.

I prepared a special report “Silver Dip 2019” updated in late 2018. The report explained the exact conditions you need to make leveraged silver & gold speculations that can increase the returns in a safe portfolio by as much as eight times. The purpose of the report is to share long term lessons about speculating in precious metals gained through 30 years of speculating and investing in gold and silver.

The price of silver may offer special value later in 2019, but the price of platinum is special now. So I want to send you the report “Platinum Dip 2019”.

Save $418.78… when you become a club member.

Join the International Club and receive:

#1: The $299 “Live Well and Free Anywhere Program including SNAP”. Free.

You are invited to join Eric Roseman CEO of ENR Asset Management and Thomas Fischer in an Asset Allocation conference call at no charge.

My investment adviser, ENR Asset Management, Inc. provides its clients with an annual investment outlook and strategy. This year because we are sponsoring two Multi Currency Asset Allocation seminars with ENR, you are invited to join in at no cost as a Gary Scott reader.

Eric and Thomas Fischer will discuss stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies for 2015 along with our macro outlook.

Eric writes: Although 2014 has been another good year for U.S. stocks, overseas equities have mostly posted losses when measured in dollars. It is our view that a strong American dollar will generate a significant earnings boost for European multinationals at the expense of U.S. large-caps next year. The dollar is also likely to delay the Fed’s tightening as it gains strength and curbs inflation. We are over-weighted in Europe and believe next year will witness a reversal of U.S. market leadership amid high valuation multiples, possibly higher rates and slowing GDP, if oil prices don’t recover to offset shale cash-flow bottlenecks and production cutbacks. In this environment, the Fed won’t be in a hurry to hike interest rates. The European Central Bank, on the other hand, will be forced to become much more assertive as it starts purchasing sovereign bonds as it seeks to influence euro-zone interbank lending and corporate borrowing. The ECB needs to stimulate inflation.
Click below for the Power-Point presentation that relates to the Advisory Extra call which takes place at 10:30 am EST Tuesday January 13th. Keep this presentation handy for the conference call.

If you have any questions contactThomas Fischer this weekend at Thomas@enrasset.com

Gary

Multi Currency Value Investing Seminar

Old Accord Creates New Profits – Multi Currency Investments.

Earn more with multi currency stock market breakouts.

Improve Safety – Increase Profits

Learn how to improve the safety of your savings and investments by selecting good value and diversified investments in a multi-currency portfolio.

Fewdecisions are as important to your wealth as the value of the markets and currencies you invest in. This has been our area of expertise since the 1970s and we have worked with and advised some of the largest currency traders in the world.

Gain Protection First – Against the Dollar’s Purchasing Power Loss. In 1913 the The Federal Reserve Act created the Federal Reserve Bank to protect the purchasing power of the US dollar, which has since lost about 94% of its purchasing power. Here is its price compared with gold since 1900.

Dollar chart from pricedingold.com (1)

The Fed has let the dollar lose most of its strength plus has allowed interest rates to fall so low, that safe investments cannot keep pace with the drop in purchasing power.

Chart from Grandfather Economic Report (2)

Many investors have forgotten about the risk of a falling dollar because the greenback has been strong for the past five years. This temporary dollar strength came after the great recession of 2009 just as there was temporary dollar strength after the great recession of the 1980s. Then about six years after the recession, an agreement was made by major governments to weaken the dollar.

There was a severe global economic recession affecting much of the developed world in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The United States and Japan exited the recession relatively early, but high unemployment would continue to affect Europe and the UK through to at least 1985. As a consequence between 1980 and 1985, the US dollar had appreciated by about 50% against the Japanese yen, Deutsche mark, French franc and British pound, the currencies of the next four biggest economies at the time. Then the governments reached an agreement and exchange rate values of the dollar versus the yen declined by 51% from 1985 to 1987.

Now the world is again in the same place. The recession is over. Europe is a bit behind in recovery and the dollar is higher than before the recession.

There is no reason for the greenback to be strong.

The agreement in 1985 was called the Plaza Accord. Over just two years the greenback dropped nearly 50% versus other major currencies. The next accord will generate great profits for those who know what to do while it ruins the purchasing power of dollar back investments.

The strong US dollar and low interest rates have created one of the biggest stock and multi currency breakout opportunities in history. Learn how to create a plan to profit from multi currency shifts ahead.

One reason for the potential gains is that stock markets and currency values are cyclical. Due to low interest rates created by the 2009 economic downturn, the US and a few other equity markets have risen to some of their highest prices, ever. These markets offer very poor value now. The steep valuation creates incredible profit potential but also hides some enormous risks. Learn how to develop an investing strategy based of earnings, cash flows, dividends and book values to increase potential for profit and reduce the risks.

Next Extra Profit Created by Value Breakouts

Over the history of US equity markets, the price of overall markets have risen about 9.1 percent, respectively, compounded annually. Yet over more than a hundred years of stock market activity, a majority of the profits have come from just a very few dramatic breakouts.

Equity markets are ruled in the short term by emotions that create unpredictable ups and downs. Numerous fears of defaults, worries of double dip recessions, high unemployment, concerns about fiscal cliffs, hold investors back. Yet global population growth and advances in production and prosperity are relentless economic fundamentals that increase value.

Stocks rise from the cycle of war, productivity and demographics. Cycles create recurring profits. Economies and stock markets cycle up and down around every 15 years as shown in this graph.

The effect of war cycles on the US Stock Market since 1906.

Bull and bear cycles are based on cycles of human interaction, war, technology and productivity. Economic downturns create war.

Here is the war stock cycle. Military struggles (like the Civil War, WWI, WWII and the Cold War: WWIII) super charge inventiveness that creates new forms of productivity…the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, production line processes, jet engines, TV, farming techniques, plastics, telephone, computer and lastly during the Cold War, the internet. The military technology shifts to domestic use. A boom is created that leads to excess. Excess leads to correction. Correction creates an economic downturn and again to war.

Learn how the Cyber War (WWIV) may change the way we live and act and how this will affect currencies and investments.

Learn:

* How to easily buy global currencies, shares and bonds.

* Trading down and the benefits of investing in real estate in Small Town USA. We will share why this breakout value is special and why we have been recommending good value real estate in this area since 2009.

* What’s up with gold and silver? One session looks at my current position on gold and silver and asset protection. We review the state of the precious metal markets and potential problems ahead for US dollars. Learn how low interest rates eliminate opportunity costs of diversification in precious metals and foreign currencies.

* How to improve safety and increase profit with leverage and staying power. The seminar reveals Warren Buffett’s value investing strategy from research published at Yale University’s website. This research shows that the stocks Buffet chooses are safe (with low beta and low volatility), cheap (value stocks with low price-to-book ratios), and high quality (stocks of companies that are profitable, stable, growing, and with high payout ratios), but his big, extra profits come from leverage and staying power. At times Buffet’s portfolio, as all value portfolios, has fallen, but he has been willing and able to wait long periods for the value to reveal itself and prices to recover.

This chart based on a 45 year portfolio study shows that holding a diversified good value portfolio (based on a good value strategy) for 13 month’s time, increases the probability of outperformance to 70%. However those who can hold the portfolio for five years gain a 88% probability of beating the bellwether in the market and after ten years the probability increases to 97.5%.

Time is your friend when you use a good value strategy. The longer you can hold onto a well balanced good value portfolio, the better the odds of outstanding success.

Learn how much leverage to use. Leverage is like medicine, the key is dose.Buffett leverages his portfolio at a ratio of approximately 1.6 to 1. This rate of expansion by the way is called the “Golden Ratio”. It is a mathematical formula that controls the growth of most natural things; trees, the shape of leaves, the spiral of shells, as well as the way economies and societies grow.

We’ll sum the strategy, how to leverage cheap, safe, quality stocks and for what period of time based on your circumstances.

Learn to plan in a way so you never run out of money. The seminar also has a session on the importance of having and sticking to a plan. See how success is dependent on conviction, wherewithal, and skill to operate with leverage and significant risk. Learn a three point strategy based on my 50 (almost) years of investing experience combined with wisdom gained from some of the world’s best investment managers and economic mathematical scientists.

Enjoy investing more with slow, worry free, good value investing. Stress, worry and fear are three of an investor’s worst enemies. These are major foundations of the Behavior Gap, a trait exhibited by most investors, that causes them to underperform any market they choose. The behavior gap is created by natural human responses to fear. The losses created by this gap grow when investors trade short term under stress.

Learn how to put meaning into your investing by creating profitable strategies that combine good value investments with unique, personal goals.

Learn how to span the behavior gap. Behavior gaps are among the biggest reasons why so many investors fail. Human evolution makes fear the second most powerful motivator. (Greed is the third.) Fear creates investment losses due to behavior gaps. Fear motivates us more strongly than desire. By nature investors are risk adverse, when they should embrace risk. Purpose is the most powerful motivator, stronger than fear and greed. One powerful way to overcome the behavior gap is to invest with a purpose.

Combine your needs and capabilities with the secrets and the math of our good value model portfolio.

Share ideas about my good value portfolio. My personal investment portfolio comes from a continual analysis of international stock markets and a comparison of their value based on current book to price, cash flow to price, earnings to price, average dividend yield, return on equity and cash flow return.

Learn how to use Country ETFs to easily construct a diversified, risk-controlled, equally weighted representative country portfolios in all of these good value countries.

To achieve this goal my portfolio consists of Country Index ETFs that track an index of shares in a specific country. These country ETFs provide diversification into a basket of equities in the good value countries. The expense ratios for most ETFs are lower than those of the average mutual fund as well so such ETFs provide diversification and cost efficiency.

This is an easy, simple and effective approach to zeroing in on value because little management and guesswork is required. You are investing in a diversified portfolio of good value indices. A BUY rating for an index does NOT imply that any stock in that country is an attractive investment, so you do not have to pick and choose shares. You can invest in the index which is like investing in all the shares in the index. All you have to do is invest in an ETF that in turn invests passively in all the shares of the index.

Learn the results of a $80,000 share purchase cost test that found the least expensive way to invest in good value. The keys to this portfolio are good value, low cost, minimal fuss and bother. Plus a great savings of time. Trading is minimal, usually not more than one or two shares are bought or sold in a year. I wanted to find the very least expensive way to create and hold this portfolio so I performed a test.

The Test for Low Cost Trading

Research put every part of this portfolio in place, except knowing the best, easiest and least expensive way to buy. A search for an optimal way to buy and hold boiled down to two methods. One tactic to test was to use a unique online broker that appeared to offer the lowest cost deal. The other approach was to use a community bank in Smalltown USA. The small town bank that I use looks after my 401K trust account and their service is first class. The benefit of small banks is that they still treat us as a human beings (instead of a number) and when we need, it’s easy to go right to the top to answer a question or get a problem resolved. There are no call centers and the bank and the person looking after my account is just around the corner.

I created a test to see which offered the least expensive service.

Working with my banker in Smalltown USA, I created two accounts, one at the online broker and the other at the bank. I placed $40,000 in each.

I set up the order for the country ETFs online, while my trust manager set up orders for the identical amounts of the same shares in his system. Then we got on the phone, coordinated our timing and on a count of three each pushed the button “BUY”.

The results of this test show how you can gain on any purchase of country ETFs.

In this special offer, you can get this online seminar FREE when you subscribe to our Personal investing Course.

Save $468.90 If You Act Now

Subscribe to the first year of The Personal investing Course (Pi). The annual fee is $299, but to introduce you to this online, course that is based on real time investing, I am knocking $102 off the subscription. Plus you receive FREE the $29.95 report “Three Currency Patterns for 50% Profits or More”, the $39.95 report “Silver Dip 2017” and our latest $297 online seminar for a total savings of $468.90.

Triple Guarantee

Enroll in Pi. Get the basic training, the 46 market value report, access to all the updates of the past two years, the two reports and the Value Investing Seminar right away.

#1: I guarantee you’ll learn ideas about investing that are unique and can reduce stress as they help you enhance your profits through slow, worry free, easy diversified investing.

If you are not totally happy, simply let me know.

#2: I guarantee you can cancel your subscription within 60 days and I’ll refund your subscription fee in full, no questions asked.

#3: You can keep the two reports and Value Investing Seminar as my thanks for trying.

You have nothing to lose except the fear. You gain the ultimate form of financial security as you reduce risk and increase profit potential.

I am an optimistic cynic because every problem creates an opportunity. Our motto “The sun always shines somewhere” was shared in my first book “Passport to International Profit” which Merri and I published in the 1970s. Spotting problems and the value they create has been our main occupation since.

The book “Dark Pools” By Scott Patterson shows why the big financial institutions are stealing from you. Patterson is author of the New York Times best-selling book, “The Quants”. and a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal, where he writes about the government’s regulation of the financial industry.

Dark Pools explains a problem created by high-speed traders, called high-frequency traders that has been spreading across Wall Street. These traders jump in and out of stocks in microseconds (millionths of a second). These and dark pools which are sub-markets that mask buy and sell orders from public view, allow insiders to skim spreads off each stock order.

Recently a book on the same subject, “Flash Boys – A Wall Street Revolt” was recommended in a message at this site entitled “Flash Boys”. The book looks at the huge problem of how most of the Big Banks and Wall Street brokers systematically rip off their customers again and again. The book shows the advice that many financial advisers and institutions give is designed to make them, not you or me, financially secure.

If you have ever trusted a big bank’s investment advice, reading these books can make you really cynical. However this is also a story of great honor, integrity and good versus bad. Flash Boys tells how honorable traders on Wall Street gave up secure, seven figure incomes and took a huge risk, earning much less, to form IEX, a dark pool that operates in a more transparent and straightforward manner. The pool has introduced strategies to ensure trustworthiness. This gamble has paid off. IEX has grown steadily and at times has had more volume than AMEX. By November 2014, average daily volume was over 100 million shares a day.

“Flash Boys” and “Dark Pools” give us a glimpse of human nature, how systems are always abused by some and how there are also always some honorable people who fight the abuse. One prime problem on Wall Street is that the reward system is short term and slights the customer. Employees are paid bonuses based on the creation of short term profits for the bank, not the bank’s customers.

A CNN Money article (1) says that the bonuses paid to bankers on Wall Street in 2014 was over $27 Billion.

This is a global problem. For example a BBC article (2) says that in 2013 some bank’s paid their senior or risk-taking staff over $3 million each on average and that this type of employee earned on average almost 50 times average annual pay in Britain.

The root of this problem is that these bonuses are based on the bank’s profits for the year and the bonuses have nothing to do with the customer’s success.

The sun always shines somewhere and by looking for the people who prefer the good. Looking for integrity may seem simplistic but can often pay great rewards. An rewarding example is Merri’s and my position as customers and shareholders of Jyske Bank for so many years. From the first day we visited Jyske more than two decades ago, I liked the idea that Jyske’s management looked beyond the short term bottom line. Their core foundation is based on treating three stakeholders as equal, the shareholders, the customers and the staff through a chain of value.

Part of Jyske’s policy includes paying good salaries, providing good staff benefits but avoiding all bonuses. This avoids any potential conflict between the staff and the customers.

In 2002 Merri and I invested in shares. We were visiting the bank with a group of readers. We had been in Copenhagen for several days and took the group out to the bank’s headquarters in the small charming village of Silkeborg. We visited the CEO (who has been a friend for many years) in his new modest offices, saw the bank’s new currency trading room and visited with the Jyske Invest Fund Managers. What impressed us was the conservative and balanced thinking throughout the bank. There were no staff limos or corporate jets. The CEO’s office was small with walls of glass so staff could see him at work. The bank worked for and talked about the long term view.

We invested in Jyske shares at DKK 96.50 on 2nd September 2002 and sold a portion in April 2006 at DKK 352.50. The share price of the remaining shares we hold (including in 2008) has never dropped below our purchase price. Today are over DKK300 again. The strong US dollar makes an investment in Jyske Bank attractive.

There are dark forces all around us. They have always been but their existence can create fear. That fear creates opportunity when you look for businesses that have integrity and long term strategic thinking.

Gary

Turn Your Passion to Profit So You Never Run Out of Money

Earn everlasting wealth and fulfillment as you reduce stress.

First earn with online self publishing. The three stories below show how Amazon.com and self publishing has enriched the lives of three others.

Online self publishing is creating a wealthy writer’s middle class. Read the three stories of self publishing success below to learn a secret that new self publishers can use to make life rich.

In the past, a few writers made fortunes. The rest starved. No more! The old way of writing and publishing was great… if you like the lottery. Not so good if you wanted an income for sure.

There are growing numbers of great stories about beginning writers using Kindle to sell their publications. Here are three stories of how new self publishers have used Amazon.com to make their lives better as they earned more.

Let’s start with Nickolette Goff who is retired and loves, organic gardening, healthy cooking and visiting Ecuador. She had never published a book and after our self publishing course she wrote and promoted her first book… a Quinoa recipe cookbook with 13 recipes she garnered from her Ecuador trips. She had 10,000 downloads of the book in five days and obtained dozens of good reviews!

You can get 13 more great quinoa recipes in Nicki Goff’s book at the links below.

She wrote: Hi, Gary, Book sales are actually going well, and I’m having a lot of fun with this. I’m so grateful to you and Merri for pushing me to get some action going!

The free promos really get things going, and seem to reignite sales.

Two more in the works – both on gardening topics. Best wishes for 2013 to you and Merri. Love, Nicki

Nicki’s husband recently wrote: Nicki, her sister and two nieces are visiting Ecuador for 3 weeks in January – Her Kindle books have paid for her trip so she loves that.

Nicki’s first book sells for .99 cents and is ranked #266,764 of paid sales in the Kindle Store. Even being ranked in the 200,000 class, Nicki has earned enough to travel to Ecuador.

Take Bob Gandt as another example.

Bob Gandt has had great writing success and has been published by numerous major publishers. Bob’s niche is flying, war and writing. He published his first story at age sixteen – the same year he first soloed an airplane. Since then he has logged something over 25,000 hours, written fourteen books and published countless articles. Hearing the stories of others like Bob help me (as well as you) better understand how many different ways there are to Write to Sell.

At age 20 he was at the time the youngest aviator in the U.S. Navy. In 1965 he began his 26 year career as a pilot for Pan American World Airways. His 1995 book, Skygods, (Wm. Morrow & Co.), recounts the meteoric descent and crash of the once-great Pan Am. His 1997 book “Bogeys and Bandits” (Viking Penguin) told of a training squadron at the same base where he had trained years before.

This book led to a CBS series Pensacola: Wings Of Gold. Bob was the writer and technical consultant for these twenty-two-episodes, which starred James Brolin as the commander of a Marine F/A-18 training squadron. Bob’s books were previously published by the big publishing houses, but now Bob’s focus is on self publishing. As an author whose numerous books have been published for and sold through book stores, he sees the bookstore path filled with dinosaurs.

Bob started with print but took a special step that every writer should know. This step has helped him add Ebooks to his stable of income producing systems. Print and Ebooks are all part of the publishing process… but Ebooks make self publishing easier than ever before. Bob’s passion is flying and the military. His books reflect this.

Learning and sharing your passion with like minded souls is just fun. There is no other way to say it. This is how life should be lived and self publishing lets you live it this way.

Yet despite an offer from a major publisher, Bob self published his latest book at Amazon.com. We helped introduce this book last April and it has reached #1o on the Military Thrillers best sellers list several times since! See Bob’s website here.

Another great story is about Hugh Howey, a writer that every self publisher should meet and hear. Hugh had had just a little success with publishers, a book with modest success.

Hugh whipping me badly in a game of chess.

Hugh self published his book Wool. Hugh was a bookstore clerk. In his spare time he wrote science fiction and began self-publishing his work on Amazon.com in 2011. Soon he was earning him over $100,000 a month on Amazon. His books made the New York Times best seller list. See Hugh Howey’s Amazon.com page here.

The formula that each of these writers has used is based around building a following for their books. They wrote more than one book. They sell their first book at a low price (free to .99 cents). This compares to the typical $9.99 to $12.99 for books written by top branded authors on Kindle.

The low price starts building a readership. In Hugh Howey’s case, he offered his first book free. After the book became a best seller at Amazon.com, his other book sales, foreign rights, six figure print deal and film rights flowed naturally.

Nicki Goff and Bob Gandt are using this formula as well… a low priced first book attracts readers and builds a following for more…. higher priced, followup books.

This is one secret contained in our Self Publishing Course “Self Fulfilled – How to be a Self Publisher”.

Online self publishing allows you to lower price… increase volume and cut out a publisher, distributor and book store who normally absorb up to 88% of the income created by a book.

You can start self publishing with no printing costs, no shelf space, no inventory, no postal delivery. Most of the publishing expenses are eliminated.

The writer keeps 70%.

Amazon keeps 30%.

A typical writer earning 12% of the wholesale book sales makes about $.60 per $9.99 book sale. A Kindle writer makes $2.10 on a $3 sale.

Costs are reduced as well. Nicki Goff, Bob Gandt and Hugh Howey all write at home with no office or staff overheads. This is how most self publishers start so all the income generated is profit.

This is a new exciting era for writers.

Smart self publishers can begin earning quickly with no obstacles between their publication and the reading public. New technology provides self publishers with the following benefits:

* Printing, shipping and disposal (of unsold books) costs eliminated.

* Shelf space unlimited and almost free with no capital costs.

* Increased sales volume. Kindle owners buy more books than print readers and will spend weekly to get new chapters rather than entire books.

Get a great head start on earning income through the the evolving online self publishing process that we reveal in our course.

If you take advantage of this offer there is a new added benefit. You receive the basic “Self Fulfilled – How to be a Self Publisher 101”, “Self Publishing 202… How to Publish on Kindle” and our newest course “Self Publishing 303 – Tapping into the Amazon Evolution”.

The goal of “Self Publishing 303” is to help writers take advantage of a new trends at Amazon.com. During the initial stages these new features offer the greatest potential.

Amazon.com publishing is evolving. I have been studying, testing and publishing at Amazon.com and applying new technology offered by Amazon.com. The 303 sessions share what I learned.

“Self Fulfilled – How to be a Self Publisher” teaches our proprietary step-by-step plan for getting your publishing business going… full or part-time… right away.

You learn:

* How you can start earning quickly with a very small amount of money even if you do not write full time.

* 11 steps to creating the perfect product, including how to review ideas, test focus, and aim at markets.

* How to gain 1,000% returns on some of your publications.

* How to choose a format—book, newsletter, list, audio or video—that suits you and your audience.

* Frequently committed marketing mistakes and how to avoid them (plus, you’ll get samples of winning marketing pieces to study).

My wife, Merri, and I became multi-millionaires in our own self-publishing business over 40+ years. Today, we have more cars than we can drive, five homes and numerous cabins in North Carolina and Ecuador. We have a beautiful lake front home on 16 acres (with an orange grove to boot). We have no mortgages, not a penny of debt, and plenty of money in the bank. More importantly even though we are well past retirement age, we can remain active, love what we do… and make contributions to society that feel are meaningful.

Gain practical publishing ideas and case studies.

For example, you’ll learn about a pilot who published a book on the best airport cafés (suddenly all his flying became tax-deductible!)… how one couple who loved an island wrote a guide on the place and made enough money to buy a home on the beach there… and how another couple made millions with a simple legal idea.

What’s Your Passion: Travel and Tourism?

A client of ours amassed a fortune by starting travel guides for cities. He started with Sarasota, Florida, publishing a simple booklet with attractions, restaurants, etc. and plenty of advertising. Then he moved onto Naples, and on and on,until the whole state of Florida was done.

He didn’t have to put much work into the booklets as he could carry over plenty of generic information from booklet to booklet. But there were plenty of advertisers and plenty of people who wanted to obtain these booklets.

You learn:

* How to set up a computerized fulfillment center even if you’re computer illiterate.

* How to turn advertising dollars into a fortune by creating winning ads, direct mail pieces, and getting thousands of dollars in free publicity.

* How to use your computer and the internet to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in printing and postage.

* How to control inventory, check ad results, and keep overhead down.

* 11 financial hazards to avoid and tricks to stay profitable without a daily accountant.

* My secret pricing strategies that will help you sell more units of your product.

* How to define and target your internet market, and start getting visits

* How to develop your website

* The top 10 internet tips to use and the top 10 traps to avoid

“In Self Fulfilled – How to be a Self Publisher” Merri and I give away every publishing secret we know to write to sell for a solid income.

Why we’ll add the Self Published Kindle addition free.

Our self publishing course has been a mainstay for almost three decades but is updated regularly. The course is based on the trial and error experiences Merri and I have had for the past 47 years… the very experiences that have made us self-fulfilled multimillionaires. We are continually adapting our business as the industry evolves. Our course helps readers evolve with us.

There is more because Merri’s and my story goes beyond self publishing. We have also always earned with travel.

The second way to get ahead is by getting ahead. Really.

The bell shaped curve affects all trends. The 15.75% of businesses and investors that really get ahead are the early adopters. They gain the largest rewards.

You can get ahead because a new trend is on its way. This is an era of rapid disruptive change that hits even the giants. In fact the bigger they are… the more vulnerable they become. Amazon.com for example has turned huge industries upside down… and knocked booksellers, publishers and many retail businesses to their knees, but is Amazon.com the giant that will stumble next?

Our online course “Event – Full Business, How to Profit From an Events Business” teaches how to earn by conducting seminars and tours.

Self publishing at Amazon.com is evolving. The idea of simply publishing and just waiting for royalties to roll in, is well along the bell shaped curve. Amazon will be with us for some time… but new technologies that can disrupt Amazon.com are already on their way.

What’s Next? – Huge Profits For the Early Adapter

Amazon.com will change. The firm has incredible income but small profit. Amazon.com is the 1,000 pound gorilla when it comes to selling books. For how long? Just when everyone thinks they have the system figured out… a new disruption comes along. Ask the guys at Borders or Barnes & Noble! Wait… that’s right. I forgot. Borders is gone. Barnes & Noble’s retails sales have been decreasing for years.

Be a Micro Amazon.com. A new trend is rising… small companies with Amazon.com like capabilities. Early adopters have a chance to get ahead of this trend by mastering the 7Ps.

Our two online courses, “Self Fulfilled – How to Self Publish” and “Event – Full Business – How to Profit From an Events Business”, both teach how to use the 7Ps. The two courses work together in a synergistic way so you can create a micro publishing seminar business as Merri and I have.

Whatever disruption new technology brings, the 7Ps create opportunity because they identify, reach, engage, focus and solidify customers at a profit.

The Ps are really important to any writer, publisher or micro business because they transcend all forms of technology. They are a constant in an ever changing world.

The 7Ps reflect an immutable logic that worked in paper based publishing before computers. They worked with computerized Cheshire labels. The 7Ps worked with jet printing on envelopes and personalized emails. They work for websites and blogs. Our Writer’s Camp and Online Self Fulfilled delegates and Event Full subscribers are using the 7Ps successfully right now at Amazon.com and in numerous micro businesses.

Learn how to earn extra income by combining the 7Ps in an events business that is supported by self publishing and writing to sell.

Merri and I speaking to over 400 delegates in Quito, Ecuador

Merri and I speaking to a dozen delegates at our farm office in North Carolina.

Merri and I have been using the 7Ps for over 45 years. Since May 1968 we have been paid to travel and live exactly where we have wanted to be… because we have known how to write to sell and monetize the publishing success with events, seminars, courses and tours.

The combination of self publishing working hand in hand with an events business has allowed us to visit and to live anywhere in the world we have desired. Many of our courses delegates are using the 7Ps to enjoy great profits and lifestyle as well.

One reader sent me this note:

“Gary,I participated in a Home Party last week and sold $253 worth of Ecuador goods that I brought back on my trip there last November. That makes a total of approx. $450 in random sales so far which comes real close to paying for my airline ticket. I still have a nice inventory, so will work on selling the rest.”

This reader is using an events based business to generate income that pays for Ecuador travel.

Our online course “Event – Full Business” shows how to start small and gradually build a larger events business (if that is your desire) as we have done.

There are many fringe benefits to an events business. For example almost all of our global travel has been tax deductible for all these years.

The pay has certainly not been bad either. One event earned $142,260 in three days. In another instance we earned over $135,000 in two days. Once our earnings exceeded $200,000 in just three days. More often we bring in $10,000 for a weekend’s work.

Yet the income has been a small part of this adventure. The expanded horizons… the people we have met… the adventures we have shared… the tens of thousands of delegates we have enjoyed and hopefully helped…. the poor we have served… the freedom we have felt… to be able to go where we desire and come home, when we desire, with more than when we left.

Event Full Business- How to Have a Seminar and Tour Business.

We have conducted seminars or events or spoken at them in… (alphabetical order) Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Belgium, Belize, Canada, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, England, Ecuador, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary (before the Iron Curtain came down), Indonesia, Isle of Man, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Nevis, Panama, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Scotland, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand and at one time or another most of the United States and even more.

There is a possibility that Merri and I know more about conducting events than 99.9% of the people in the world.

We share what we know about events in our emailed correspondence course: “Event – Full Business”.

Self publishing and events go hand in hand. Writing to sell can build an events business and events can sell self published books, reports and courses.

Here are the initial lessons you receive.

#1: How to earn millions from seminars, courses and tours. See how we have earned as much as $200,000 for three days’ work. (Once $135,000 in two days.)

#2: How to build a seminar business. See the one day Washington-Atlanta-San Francisco system that helped our courses evolve and how to use this approach to help your teaching grow.

#3: When and when not to use other speakers. Seminars for speakers… a way to get it all out as your bank accounts gets it all in.

#4: How to use other speakers. Gain the key to the room and the people within. Why the golden pen is mightier than a glib tongue, the sword and the overloaded brain.

#5: Dealing with hotels/locations. Why the marketing does not talk to catering which will not communicate with accounting and the mess this could mean for you. How to choose… arrange and survive the hotel. Forget the $11,314 coffee bill… for swill.

#6: Scheduling seminars. Magic dates and times for marketing… how far in advance to market and seminar death dates to avoid.

#7: Creating a back end business. How Merri made $12,936 dollars at a seminar in 37 minutes by just standing still.

#8: Three types of courses… delegate driven… speaker driven… third party driven.

#9: The importance of strategic partnerships for added wealth.

#10: How to market seminars, courses & tours.

#11: How to build a List.

#12: Alternative seminar and course location options.

#13: The benefits of both big seminars and small courses.

#14: How to survive the dreaded problems: What to do when enrollments are low. Handling the heckler, the takeover and the cell phone. When the hotel fails. Surviving speaker no shows and all of those types of things!

#15: How to enhance your other businesses with seminars.

Event – Full Business – How to have a seminar and tour business sells for $349, but in this special offer you receive both fully guaranteed online courses “Event – Full Business” and “Self Fulfilled” for only $299 and save $349.

Self Fulfilled-How to be A Self Publisher. There are growing numbers of great stories about beginning writers using Kindle to sell their publications. You saw three above.

The course includes 11 steps to creating the perfect product, including how to review ideas, test focus, and aim at markets.

* How you can start with a very small amount of money and eventually work only four hours a day (if you are operating full-time).

* How to gain 1,000% returns on some of your publications.

* How to choose a format—book, newsletter, list, audio or video—that suits you and your audience.

* Frequently committed marketing mistakes and how to avoid them (plus, you’ll get samples of winning marketing pieces to study).

* How to set up a computerized fulfillment center even if you’re computer illiterate.

* How to turn advertising dollars into a fortune by creating winning ads, direct mail pieces, and getting thousands of dollars in free publicity.

* How to use your computer and the internet to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in printing and postage.

* How to control inventory, check ad results, and keep overhead down.

* 11 financial hazards to avoid and tricks to stay profitable without a daily accountant.

* My secret pricing strategies that will help you sell more units of your product.

* Plus much, much more that I don’t have space for here!

* How to use the internet to publish

* How to define and target your internet market, and start getting visits

* How to develop your website

* The top 10 internet tips to use and the top 10 traps to avoid

To help you start, I have created a special offer… our course on how to be a self publisher, our course on how to use the internet and a website in your business and six bonuses for you.

Bonus #2: Get FREE, the $299 online course “The Tangled Webs We Weave – How to Have an Internet Business”. To read more about this course click here.

Bonus #3: Our Super Thinking Workshop in an MP3 file so you can listen on your computer, burn a disk or listen on you Ipod or in your car. This workshop is a $199 value.

Bonus #4: A special report only available to those who enroll in “Self Fulfilled” entitled “Three Secrets for Creating Publishing Ideas”.

Bonus #5: We have created a special program so you can enjoy both our guaranteed online courses “Self Fulfilled – How to be a Self Publisher” and “Event Full Business – How to Have a Seminar and Tour Business”. “Event Full Business – How to Have a Seminar and Tour Business” has been offered regularly at $349.

When you order “Self Fulfilled – How to be a Self Publisher” at the regular price of $499 you receive all five bonuses at no extra cost. You save $946 total.

Order Self Publishing: Your Complete Business Plan for becoming a self publisher and take a full 30 days to put it through its paces. That way you can follow my simple process and start seeing the results for yourself.

If you’re not completely convinced that this information can help you develop income through writing to sell—all you have to do is let us know and you’ll receive a complete refund of every penny of your investment.

Fair enough?

Our publishing business has brought us more wealth, satisfaction, fun and friendship than we ever imagined possible. We want to share our knowledge and secrets with anyone who has a desire to experience this way of life.

Whether you are an engineer, doctor, housewife, business owner, or retiree… self-publishing offers a way to create income by turning your passion into profit.

Don’t miss this special opportunity. Order Self Fulfilled – How to be a Self Publisher today if you want to cash in on the satisfying, profitable and exciting lifestyle that publishing can bring despite and in fact because of trouble in the world.

In 2015 two items will be in the news again and again, Russia and the price of oil. Each presents some fabulous opportunity as distortions created by fear create extra value.

Chart “How much does it cost to produce crude oil and natural gas? (From US Energy Information Administration (1))

As the 2015 news unfolds, there are three factors about oil and Russia, plus many other countries, to keep in mind.

#1: The price of oil versus uplift cost in the various oil producing countries.

#2: The price of oil.

#3: The price of oil for oil producing countries to balance their budget. This is a really important point because oil extraction when oil is selling at 60 dollars a barrel can be profitable in many countries (such as Russia), but not create sufficient revenue in countries where the political process and government are financed by oil sales.

For example Ecuador, OPEC’s smallest producer needs about an $80 dollar a barrel oil price to balance its fiscal 2015 budget. Ecuador has crude-oil reserves of 8.8 billion barrels and crude-oil production of a half million barrels a day which is a tiny 0.6% of total world production and 1.7% of OPEC’s production.

Russia, as shown below produces oil at about $8 a barrel overall, but needs a crude price of $100 to balance the nation’s budget. Price of oil compared to production costs is less important than price of oil compared to budget deficits. Keep this in mind as plunging oil prices create contrasts and distortions that equate to value and opportunity.

Here are some definitions you’ll want to know in the year ahead. This will help all of us to understand the news.

#1: Lifting costs are the costs of oil and gas wells and related equipment and facilities to bring oil and gas to the surface.

#2: Finding costs are exploring for and developing reserves of oil and gas and the costs to buy or lease oil and gas reserves.

#3: Upstream cost (also called Capex) and it is the total cost to produce crude oil and natural gas including lifting and finding costs.

#4: A brownfield is an oil or gas field that has proven production.

#5: A greenfield project is a completely undeveloped area of possible production.

#6: BOE is Barrel of Oil Equivalent.

We can see how opportunity will develop in an article “These countries are getting killed by cheap oil by Jesse Solomon” (2) Bolds are mine in all the excerpts below.

Here is an excerpt: The price is not right for many oil rich nations. That’s bad news for Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, among others. They need the black stuff to trade at far loftier levels in order to balance their budgets.

Iran’s budget, for example, is built on oil at $135 dollars per barrel, according to data from Deutsche Bank and Thomson Reuters compiled by DoubleLine Capital. Russia has oil budgeted at $100, while Saudi Arabia will break even at $95 per barrel.

OPEC’s idea is to try to knock out U.S. shale producers by driving prices lower than they can afford. That way Saudi Arabia, the cartel’s biggest exporter, can keep its market share in the U.S. But the damage to its fellow oil exporters could be severe. In Russia, for example, the ruble is plummeting. Iraq is already having trouble fighting ISIS, and lower oil prices won’t help. Libya is in chaos. Venezuela’s economy, already on life support, depends on oil for 95 percent of its export revenue.

An Analysis by EY (Ernst Young) US upstream cost prices and the unconventional treadmill (4) say: As was reported in our US reserves studies, US upstream oil and gas spending has been increasing rapidly with the onset of the so-called “shale” or “unconventional revolution,” beginning in the middle of the last decade. We can also use the related reported data to estimate costs on a full-cycle basis, noting that notional full-cycle costs have surged (along with global oil prices) from an average of around US$20 per barrel of oil equivalent (boe) before 2004 to more than US$60 per BOE as of 2013. As shown in Figure 1, apart from the distortions related to the global financial collapse in 2009, notional full-cycle costs have averaged over US$60 per BOE since 2008.

Chart of US costs from EY Analysis.

The Bakken Magazine (5) says: The evolving Bakken story has just added a new, utterly complex twist. Crude prices—economically advantageous for the shale oil industry in the past five years—have fallen. Few, if any, can predict when the price bottom will be reached or what falling crude prices will mean to the Bakken shale play. And, although many have tried, few, if any, can offer an acceptable prediction on what falling crude prices will mean to the Bakken shale play.

Russian oil and gas companies the production of oil in Russia remains cheaper. Thus, average lifting costs per BOE $5.8 /boe for Russian oil and gas companies over the past three years, while lifting costs averaged $9.9 BOE.

The same is true for upstream capex per BOE. 2013 the average ratio for Russian oil companies stood at $ 7.6 /BOE, which is less than one quarter the level of Developed Market majors ($34.5/BOE) and less than one third the level of Emerging Market oil companies ($25.5/BOE).

The reasons are much higher rates of onshore production at brownfields in the overall production structure. As the depletion of currently producing major fields continues in Russia lifting costs and upstream capex increases at approximately the same rates as globally.

Oil cost chart from Gazprom Oil & Gas Weekly

How to take advantage of the situation. One way is to cash in on fear. An example comes in a recommendation from Eric Roseman at ENR Asset Management. Here is an excerpt of a note that Eric sent me: Gary, This is a special bulletin that deserves your full attention. With crude oil prices crashing more than 40% since June, the entire energy-related infrastructure, including oil drilling, exploration and development, has been threatened. The entire energy space has plunged since November with the latest leg falling off a cliff this month as oil continues its relentless decline, now at $55/barrel this morning for West Texas crude and $59 for Brent oil — compounded by a financial crisis in Russia as the ruble tanks. Crude oil now trades at its lowest price since 2009. The market fears a sustained price war where OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, refuses to cut production while American shale producers flood the market at the same time. This game of ‘chicken’ will end badly for the shale sector, if oil continues to slide. I think Saudi Arabia is trying to put the American shale companies out of business. Already, bond prices for shale companies – responsible for about 20% of all high-yield debt financing over the last four years – are suffering from big redemptions from investors as cash-flow continues to threaten operations for the most marginal producers. We now foresee a wave of defaults by the most leveraged U.S. shale companies with oil prices at these low levels.

Although the bear market in oil is bad news for energy investors, it’s very bullish for refiners, or companies that refine and sell gasoline, diesel and other distillate fuels.

One of the sector’s true mavens is Tom O’Malley, who has spent more than 30 years in the business specializing in taking troubled refiners and turning their economic fortunes around. He’s made millions for his investors.

Today, Mr. O’Malley is the CEO of small-cap company, PBF Energy (NYSE-PBF). The company went public about three years ago and trades 35% below its all-time high and 20% off its 52-week high. The stock trades at just 6.3 times trailing earnings, 1.37 times book-value and yields 4.6% in annual dividends. This is a great value-and-growth story. With crude oil prices in the basement, growth investors should be accumulating a well-managed company like PBR Energy now.

My advice is to buy PBF Energy at market at Jyske Bank and place a 20% stop-loss on your entry price. This is the best time since the financial crisis in 2008-2009 to buy refiners.

I will provide an in-depth analysis of PBR Energy in the January issue of Advisory Extra. Regards, Eric

Reaction to oil prices may reflect political rather than market concerns. These reactions may be illogical and as the Bakken Magazine article stated: Although many have tried, few, if any, can offer an acceptable prediction on what falling crude prices will mean. This creates fertile ground for distortions that create value opportunity. We’ll watch for these situations and share what we find.

Gary

Global Earnings Seminar

How to Have Peace & Profit in 2019

There are still ways to reduce stress.

Prolonged exposure to stress is the # 1 root of death and disease in our modern world.

Stress can ruin your health and wealth… in many ways.

Daily stress has been magnified because we no control, no way out of the current global political and economic mess. The news makes current problems feel like things are getting worse.

The health problems lead to economic problems from loss of income, poor investment decisions and high disease management costs.

Yet there is a way back.

I was reminded of this once when I made a horrible mistake.

The supposed error? Letting my mind wander six decades back to an hour I spent with a girl.

Learn from this near disaster, seven most powerful sources of wealth, health, security and fulfillment in this era.

The girl was pretty and blond. Terry was her name. My imagination spanned decades returning to my Oregon roots seeing her as if she were there.

We were 11 or 12 and had known each other since we started Rockwood grade school. Just buddies, our non-romantic friendship lasted 12 years, from first grade till high school’s end. Then she went off to Pepperdine College in California. I started traveling the world. Never saw her again. I hope her life has gone well. But until that reflection I’d never thought much of Terry in so many years.

What could have been the tragic error was letting that memory touch my heart. Two kids, walking on a crisp, Pacific Northwest autumnal afternoon.

We walked down a sun filled, pine needle covered, dirt path. Huge, fat, green Douglas firs lined the road. Traffic was no problem, not many cars. Crossing Stark Street we turned left, hiking three blocks to 182nd. There we passed an old clapboard candy store. I can still hear the wooden sidewalk of that store slap beneath my feet, felt the soggy planks sag and smelled astringent pitch from the fir trees. Then we turned right, up 182nd for about a mile. There was Terry’s house.

I carried on, walking through a big field, waist high grass turned straw brown by an early frost. There were dozens of paths made by who knows what. Animals perhaps or countless generations of other kids walking home alone from school. I chose one following it to another wood of tall, rough-barked fir. Crossing one more field, I climbed a rock wall, struggled through a barbed wire fence (my Mom hated that fence ripping my jeans). I was home!

Sweet simplicity, that dream. Two kids holding hands, walking on a dirt trail under a crisp, but blue, sunny sky. Pure innocence.

My tragic error was looking back. I returned to Rockwood, Oregon with Merri and my kids to show them this part of their roots. Following the route, Terry and I had walked were the candy store, grange hall, old wooden buildings and their home spun honesty and charm.

Instead we found six lanes of fast, frantic traffic and road rage. McDonalds, KFC, strip shopping centers. The car radio blared warnings of local gangs and drive-by-shootings.

How can our kids walk in places like this? How can we return to those old feeling of security and comfort?

How can any of us possibly keep pace in this world that’s moving so fast?

Then something inside snapped.

“There has to be an answer for honest, hard working folks to enjoy the wonderful opportunities of today and regain what we’ve lost over the past forty years”, I swore to myself.

How can we keep up, without having such a fast paced life we turn into machines? Where do we find time for God, family, charity, and our friends? How can we rediscover those sun filled, pine needle covered, dirt paths we want to walk?

“There has to be places that are still innocent and pure”, I thought. “There has to be a way of life that does not pound us with stress”.

This thinking led me to begin reviewing the thousands of economic and business experiences I have shared with readers over the decades.

This started a search for a simpler way of life and a better place to earn and protect our wealth.

By digging, asking and observing, traveling and talking to investors and investment managers all over the world I found that there are true paths to real security in the here and now. That knowledge helped me develop courses on how to have natural health, everlasting wealth and purposeful investments.

This knowledge helped Merri and me invest in stocks and real estate all over the world. It helped us find and develop our farms in North Carolina and Florida into sanctuaries.

That almost error led us to create an entire portfolio of information on how to keep pace, get ahead, enjoy our modern society but, to enjoy life wherever you choose without having to move too fast.

This is why I am making a special “Let’s get our lives back” offer.

“What would you think in the last 30 seconds of your life if you were the richest man in the world but were unhappy?”

This quote is from the opening slide of our Value Investing Seminar, “How to Secure Your Future With a Value Breakout Plan”. This a vital question because few investors think about the value of comfort and happiness. Yet the truth is, those who are comfortable and happy with their investments are most likely to succeed financially.

Without comfort, no matter how much money a person has, they are more likely to lose it or kill themselves with stress from worry.

There is a way to have the perfect form of financial security.

Let’s call it the perfect pension. To help understand how to build an unshakable economic platform, here is Part One of the report, The Pruppie Factor.

The Pruppie Factor – Seven Steps to Comfortable Living & Profits.

“May you live in interesting times”. That’s a Chinese curse that seems to have been cast on our modern world. We can enjoy comfort and profits in the year ahead despite this fact.

Become a Pruppie. Integrate your earning with your investing and enjoy peak living, everlasting wealth and natural health with PIEC Investing in the year ahead.

Before we look at what PIEC means, let’s delve into Pruppieism, the new economic and social realism. Pruppies expect everything to expand. They take advantage of every new benefit and technology they can. Pruppies enjoy using the fruits of our ancestor’s deliberations and labors to earn in this advanced technological world. They also engage in activity that they love that would sustain them in case society and the incredibly intricate weave of our global economy and society should fail.

Pruppies are prepared in case everything, everywhere, or at least everything relating to their income and savings fails and the fabric that surrounds their lives disintegrates into an unknown veil. Yet a Pruppie’s preparation is not a sacrifice, but a joy as you will see.

Hope springs eternal and it should. One of the key themes in my first book, Passport to International Profit, (published in the 1970s) was “The Sun Always Shines Somewhere”. This thought has been in and remains a foundation of everything I do.

Sometimes this sunshine is hard to see because the press always focuses on doom and gloom. Current news often makes the world seem about to end. We cannot blame the press. Bad news sells. The majority seem to want to worry instead of learn about all that’s good. This does not make doom and gloom right. This is why the majority are also the rich portion of the population, but bad news is an economic fact for the press.

Yet despite all the negative headlines, we have lived through the Cold War and MAD, Y2K, GridX II, the Peak Oil Crisis, the recession of the 1970s, 1980s 2007, etc. etc. etc. Chicken Little is always out there, selling the falling sky. Don’t buy into this story!

History suggests that there will always be opportunity. The sun always shines somewhere.

Brexit, global warming and the American political process are examples of how the press gravitates to negative news. The press make anything and just about everything seem negative. This can blind us to the positive realities ahead, if we let it.

Don’t.

Expect that the world will remain standing and look for opportunity instead!

Our wealth and economic opportunity is pushed by supply and demand. We are part of a growing global population. New technology makes more people, as a whole, more productive every day. The world has increasingly larger markets creating more supply in increasingly efficient ways.

This reality increases everyone’s wealth. Yes there is a lot of bad news in many places. There is inequality. There is crime. There is war and hate and injustice. Despite these negatives there is even more that is positive. Opportunity grows.

Pruppies tap into and use every bit of the good news they can. They have a plan B if everything goes wrong, but Plan B is based on something a Pruppie wants to do we love, not just a shelter from bad news.

At the end of this report, you’ll find a special offer that can help you integrate earning and investing for the ultimate form of profit and safety.

Imagine this example of Pruppism. The Tiffany lamp casts an amber glow, rich, ivory and warm in the grey gloom of early dusk. The gold knobbed mahogany desk, its deep patina waxed and smooth, shines with reflections of ancient leather Chesterfields stuffed full, but rumpled with age and of maritime shots that hang in brass frames on the wall. The room speaks of settled tradition, the kind that might never end. But thoughts instead are on the demise of the business that has supported this room.

The late Jim Slater of Slater Walker, a British industrial conglomerate turned bank in the 1970s was in that room. I recall his bank’s collapse well as I was living in Hong Kong and Slater Walker was a huge going concern in what was a British colony in those days. The Slater Walker crash was big news that unsettled the entire British banking system at the time.

Slater, the founder, had been a really high roller, using every modern banking tactic available including buying many assets with cheap loans. Then in the mid 1970s banking crisis interest rates skyrocketed and his bank was unable to refinance its debt. The company failed and Slater had to resign. Numerous charges were brought against him and he spent considerable time defending what he had done.

In the end he was only fined a nominal sum but despite this, his banking career was well and truly dead.

However he had already moved on.

He wrote about this in his autobiography, “Return To Go”. He had always had a hobby making puppet shows and telling stories to his children, so instead of banking, he turned his passion into profit and wrote some children’s books. His first effort sold a respectable 35,000 copies. His next a monster series for younger children, became a huge hit.

He had also maintained a hobby of salmon fishing so again turned his passion into profit by creating a business that bought up fishing rights and resold them as time-shares. He had quite a success.

Some day a catastrophe beyond our control could redirect the course of our lives. We might lose a job, learn that our pension won’t pay or that our dollars won’t buy as much as they must.

Though Jim Slater was a banker, outside economic forces beyond his control caused his business disaster. Yet he had options because he had been doing things he loved that were not related to his banking, but could become useful income generators in difficult time.

I do not know if Slater understood Pruppism but that’s what he was practicing.

Pruppism is a positive realism based on the knowledge that much of our lives are directed by events that we do not know or expect and could not change them even if we did. There is always something we do not know and that’s okay.

Years ago I was speaking at an investing seminar in Marbella Spain. One of the speakers was a brilliant strategist, Johan Peter Paludan, of the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies. This institute has a large interdisciplinary staff with expertise in economics, political science, ethnography, psychology, engineering, PR and sociology. They identify and analyze global trends that influence the future. Paludan was speaking of these trends and answering questions that delegates had about the world’s economic future.

One delegate asked what to do if there was a global nuclear exchange. Paludan replied that the results of some events are so unpredictable that it is not worth trying to plan for them.

This thought has stuck with me for decades because it helped me realize that no matter how cautious, how defensive and careful we are, there are events that we cannot even imagine that can turn our lives upside down, for the good or bad. With this in mind my wife Merri and I have created a lifestyle where we turn our passions into profit but in a way that whatever happens we are likely to be in a position to spot the positive and the opportunity.

A PIEC Experience

Pruppies gain the benefits of PIEC wealth. PIEC is an acronym for “Personal Income Earning Corridor”. PIEC income and wealth come from doing what you do for love, rather than just the money.

Traditionally people get jobs to create income. They work to live and support their lifestyle while attempting to spend less than they earn. They hope, that maybe the savings will bring, sometime in the future, a lifestyle of doing something enjoyable without work.

Pruppies reverse the priorities. Instead of working for money to save and invest, they focus their prime effort on doing something they enjoy right now. Then they learn how to enjoy the effort in some profitable way. They learn to create “Avenues of Abundance” that combine lifestyle with the necessary task of accumulating wealth.

If economic circumstances tie them to an existing income effort, they create hobbies that are income producers of the future.

For example, if a Pruppie loves golf; instead of working six days a week, 50 weeks a year just to golf on Sundays and during short vacations, instead he or she will create a business in some aspect of the golfing trade.

In another example, a client of mine, who loved animals became a vet. But he learned that the vet’s lifestyle was not one he enjoyed. He wanted to travel and move around, which is difficult for a professional who needs to stay at his office and build a practice. So he built a business that prepares special animal foods for race horses. Now he travels globally visiting horse breeders and makes much more money as well.

Pruppies combine money with time, energy and desires. They generate income doing something desired. Desire and fulfillment become at least as, if not more, important as the money.

#1: Do What You Love!

The reason PIECs work well is that when we love to do something, we do it better, for longer and with greater enthusiasm.

Effort, determination and tenacity are wealth building attributes that cannot fail. Yet Pruppism does not mean we should suddenly abandon our jobs and try becoming golf pros, when we have never been able to break 100. Smart Pruppies start small and gradually expand into their passion.

For example, as a writer and lecturer, I was never fully satisfied sitting behind a desk or standing on a podium all day long, even though I was making over a million bucks a year. I’m the physical, outdoors type and yearned for exercise and the wilds of the deep woods. “What good’s the money if this isn’t fun?” I often asked myself.

Rather than quit writing and teaching, I looked for ways to combine these professions with the outdoor life. Through research I learned that many city folk like myself yearn to be in the primitive outdoors. So I bought an isolated farm high in the Blue Ridge Mountains and an Andean plantation high in Ecuador where I developed seminar centers with charming but simple dwellings, set in rustic surroundings, with clean water and pure air. Now I live in nature so after I finish the writing or talking, I can walk in the woods or take my axe and chop firewood or something physical. I’ve combined my writing with physical work and have blended the life I want, with my readers’ needs in a way that makes great financial sense.

We built a series of cabins in the wild that bring more profits than most stocks or bonds could ever return.

The process took six years to shift. Now we have been at this for nearly two decades and we are far from finished. But while doing what we love, who cares? This is one of the great benefits of PIEC investing. We can slow down and enjoy the work instead of always rushing ahead, looking for something more.

Those who work nine to five can start PIEC businesses part time if they are too uneasy to quit their jobs. Others, who like myself, already have a business can slowly shift their product or service in a sensible way and let it evolve toward their PIEC.

But where do we start?

There is a seven step process we can all use whether we have our own careers, a business or even if we are retired (PIEC investing is especially good for retired folks who have found the supposed good life flat or financially short).

The first step is to get a clear idea or vision of our dream. This is sometimes harder to achieve than it seems. We are so deluged with false ideals from Washington, Wall Street, Madison Avenue, etc. that we have to stop and really take stock. What do we sincerely want?

There is a very practical economic reason to look inwards for wealth. Warren Buffet recommends that we only invest in what we understand. What can we understand better than ourselves?

This inner search will lead us to an ideal that begins the second step which is gaining enthusiasm. How can we be anything but enthusiastic about finally fulfilling our deepest dreams? The enthusiasm leads to the third step; gaining an education.

We need to find out everything we can about our idea. To succeed we must take the third step and become real experts in the product or service we offer.

Fourth, this educational process allows us to develop an intelligent, focused business plan we can act upon and the action is the fifth step which brings us the experience. Experience gives us the sixth step, a financial loss or profit. We always profit in increased knowledge which creates the seventh step, more ideas.

Then the entire cycle starts all over again: Idea, Enthusiasm, Education, Action, Experience, Financial Profit and New Ideas.

This is a way to keep adding new opportunities into our lives. Business is rarely static. It is an ever evolving process instead.

This seven step cycle may take days, weeks, months or years, but the moment you begin you’ll start moving into an avenue of affluence where you love your work so though money isn’t your main goal it comes more easily.

#2: Do what you love, but also be of service. Do something for others that is meaningful and important to you.

We all have a purpose in life and when we are filling it, we feel fulfilled. Wealth and fulfillment is the goal. Fulfillment is important because of the law of diminishing returns. A 2008 study that analyzed Gallup surveys of 450,000 Americans suggested that day-to-day contentment improves until income hits around $75,000 per annum. After that, more money just brings more stuff, with far less gain in happiness. Income beyond $75,000 does not do much for a person’s daily mood.

This is a pretty general study and regional differences in costs, inflation and life circumstances will create many fluctuations from this norm, but the point is when money is the main goal, the better you get, the harder it will be to gain satisfaction.

Giving, on the other hand, never has limitations, especially when the giving helps complete a purpose that is part of our destiny.

This is true in business and investing. A study of investors for example found that investors with socially responsible ideals gained the best returns. A dual goal of profit and achieving some social benefit provides a purpose beyond returns. This brings comfort and determination to the investments and the added stick-to-it-ness helps increase profits.

The study helped define three aspects of investing that are generally ignored, purpose and habits.

Purpose. Purpose requires some soul-searching questions about what we each want our life to be. This purpose is more important than the investment goal. The purpose of the money we have becomes more important than the amount in the portfolio.

Habits. Habits come next because we need to create habits and routines that keep us on the path of our unique purpose. The marketplace does all it can to distract us from our goals. There is an endless stream of news, rumor, conjecture, facts figures, ideas and tactics generated by every part of every stock market aimed at getting us to act in ways that benefit the agenda of others.

Good habits help us avoid being distracted from what we are meant and want to do. Good habits muffle the noise of Madison Avenue, the spin from Washington DC and the hidden agendas of big business. These are among the most powerful ways to increase wealth. Having greater fulfillment as well as more wealth is a bonus that Pruppies call “Everlasting Wealth”.

#3: Integrate your earning and investing.

Long term success in business and investing are determined by control and comfort.

Comfort comes from feeling in control, but since there is always something we do not know, real comfort comes from knowing that we are serving a valuable purpose, the best we can, regardless of how events unfold.

Real comfort helps maintain determination, dedication and enthusiasm, all among the most vital parts in the process of succeeding in investing and business.

Our own business increases comfort because a business is simply an investment that gives us more control due to the addition of our own time and energy.

A Personal Income Earning Corridor (PIEC) begin with a main income generator that we control. For some this is a job with a salary. For others it is a pension. For many it is their own business using the concepts of SNAP (Small Niche Area Publishing).

Here’s why self publishing offers such great potential.

Sam Walton… or is it Warren Buffet? Self publishing is based on three cherished beliefs that two of the wealthiest people in the world, Sam Walton and Warren Buffet, shared.

Buffet and Walton shared several cherished business beliefs that you can gain from a special writing and publishing business that is at its very beginning stage.

Cherished Belief #1: Small is Beautiful. Both Sam Walton (Bentonville, Arkansas) and Warren Buffet (Omaha, Nebraska) chose America’s heartland away from the big cities as their homes. What’s more, Walton chose to do business in these small places as well… building the largest retail operation in the world almost entirely in small towns.

Warren Buffet believes that potential in small towns offers special value. He believes this so strongly that he has been buying newspapers in small towns.

Over the last few years Berkshire Hathaway purchased 63 small and mid-sized daily and weekly newspapers throughout the United States.

He plans to buy more and says: “I like buying individual papers at the right prices.”

Buffet stated that Berkshire is not buying big newspapers or more newspaper shares. He is sticking with small publications because he believes in the value of local communities.

Cherished Belief #2: Community Orientation.

Buffet is not buying big publications but is grabbing up small community focused publications.

His bet is that publications focused on local communities can withstand the shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet.

The individual papers can be really small as 10,000 circulation with tiny staffs.

He said no one has stopped reading “half-way through a story that was about them or their neighbors.”

He also noted, “Berkshire buys for keeps. I’d rather buy newspapers myself directly,” and is seeking papers that publish in cities and towns with a “Sense of Community.”

From this vision WalMart remains committed not just to expanding the businesses but to improving the communities.

You can enjoy all these benefits through Self publishingbecause small communities can be places, ideas or ideas within places.

The factors that makes publications like this successful are its common interests. Common interest can be focused on a geographical area or a niche idea that targets a niche of a larger market. For example, the market for truckers is quite large, but trackers that look after their health is a much smaller niche. One benefit of SNAP publishing is it surrounds you with people who have a common interest, so your readers are like-minded souls.

Cherished Belief #3: Seek Good Value.

Sam Walton built one of the largest fortunes in the world… with the simple goals of providing great value and great customer service. Warren Buffett’s belief is that the essence of value investing is buying stocks at less than their intrinsic value. The discount is called the “Margin of Safety”.

Both Buffet and Walton shared a vision that small towns ignored by the mainstream offered good value. You can tap into extra profit potential as a SNAP publisher who helps a small community.

Knowing BOTH successful niche magazine publishers and internet marketing geniuses is important for a reason that Buffet outlined to his publishers when he purchased their papers. Buffet believes that small newspapers will change and that they serve an important purpose. He said, “Papers must rethink the industry’s initial response to the Internet as focus on continuing to maintain a strong sense of community“.

His bet is that publications focused on local communities can withstand the shift of readers and advertisers to the Internet. Buffet has said that giving news away free online is “unsustainable” and has sought papers that publish in cities and towns with a “sense of community.”

We have never seen this need for a sense of community as we do know because community creates trust. As the world has expanded on big is better, the public has lost trust. We no longer trust big business, big government, big hospitals, big banks, etc. Yet publications offer nothing if they do not have the reader’s trust. Internet publishing on the big scale has reduced trust. Anyone can say anything on the internet and thus internet information is highly suspect. Publishers who use a small niche to create trust have an advantage.

To begin this introduction let me add one more point and outline the value of what I am about to offer. A SNAP publication may eventually require $5,000, $10,000 or even $15,000 in start up costs but can make up to $11,835 a month… or more. That’s value… plain and simple.

Join The International Club for all of 2018 NOW. Learn how to wrote and publish. Save $418.78.

Club members start by receiving seven workshops and courses on how to earn everywhere with home micro businesses. We call this our “Live Well and Free Anywhere Program”. The program contains a series of courses and reports that show ways to earn and be free. These courses and reports are:

Club members also learn ways to be be healthier and have more energy. I have created three natural health reports about:

#1: Nutrition

#2: Purification

#3: Exercise

Recent news about Social Security, pensions and health care shows that the US government has excessive debt today and that we as individuals need tactics to make sure, when governments, pensions and insurers weasel out of their promises, that we can take care of ourselves.

One big broken promise is Social Security and Medicare. The most recent Social Security trustee report shows that the programs will begin to spend more than they earn within just three or four years. The Medicare hospital-insurance trust fund, could use all its reserves by 2028. They face insolvency over the next 20 years because Social Security runs totally out of money by 2034.

My three natural health reports help learn ways to be happier, healthier and avoid much of the Western disease management (aka healthcare) expense.

Each report is available for $19.95. However you’ll receive all three FREE as club member and save $59.85.

Next, club members participate in an intensive program called the Purposeful Investing Course (Pi). The purpose of Pi is finding value investments that increase safety and profit. Learn Slow, Worry Free, Good Value Investing.

Stress, worry and fear are three of an investor’s worst enemies. These destroyers of wealth can create a Behavior Gap, that causes investors to underperform in any market good or bad. The behavior gap is created by natural human responses to fear. Pi helps create profitable strategies that avoid losses from this gap.

Lessons from Pi are based on the creation and management of numerous Model Portfolios, called Pifolio.

We combine the research of several brilliant mathematicians and money managers with my years of investing experience.

There are no secrets about this portfolio except that these mathematicians ignore the stories from economic news (often created by someone with vested interests) and is based mainly on good math that reveals the truth through financial news.

The Pifolio is a theoretical portfolio of MSCI Country Benchmark Index ETFs that cover all the good value markets using my 50 years of global experience and my study of the analysis of four mathematical investing geniuses (and friends).

This is a complete and continual study of what to do about the movement of international major and emerging stock markets. I want to share this study throughout the next year with you.

This analysis forms the basis of a Good Value Stock Market Strategy. The analysis is rational, mathematical and does not worry about short term ups and downs. This strategy is easy for anyone to follow and use. Pi reveals the best value markets and provides contacts to managers and analysts and Country Index ETFs so almost anyone can create and follow their own strategy.

The costs are low and this type of ETF is one of the hardest for institutions to cheat. Expense ratios for most ETFs are lower than those of the average mutual fund. Little knowledge, time, management or guesswork are required. The investment is simply a diversified portfolio of good value indices. Investments in an index are like investments in all the shares of a good value market.

Pi opens insights to numerous long term cycles that most investors miss because they have not been investing long enough to see them.

The Pi subscription is normally $299 per annum but as a club member you receive Pi at no charge and save an additional $299.

There are two more reports I’ll send about the most exciting opportunities I have seen since we started sending our reports on international investing ideas more than three decades ago. The trends are so clear that I created a short, but powerful report “Three Currency Patterns for 50% Profits or More.” This report shows how to earn an extra 50% from currency shifts with even small investments. I kept the report short and simple, but included links to 153 pages of Good Value Stock Market research and Asset Allocation Analysis.

The report shows 20 good value investments and a really powerful tactic that shows the most effective and least expensive way to accumulate these bargains in large or even very small amounts (less than $5,000). There is extra profit potential of at least 50% so the report is worth a lot.

This report sells for $29.95 but when you become an International Club member you’ll receive the report, “Three Currency Patterns For 50% Profits or More” FREE.

Plus get the $39.99 report, “The Silver Dip 2019” free.

With investors watching global stock markets bounce up and down, many missed two really important profit generating events over the past two years. The price of silver dipped below $14 an ounce as did shares of the iShares Silver ETF (SLV). The second event is that the silver gold ratio hit 80 and has remained near this level, compared to a range of the 230s only two years ago.

These two events are a strong sign to invest in precious metals.

I prepared a special report “Silver Dip 2019” updated in late 2018. The report explained the exact conditions you need to make leveraged silver & gold speculations that can increase the returns in a safe portfolio by as much as eight times. The purpose of the report is to share long term lessons about speculating in precious metals gained through 30 years of speculating and investing in gold and silver.

The price of silver may offer special value later in 2019, but the price of platinum is special now. So I want to send you the report “Platinum Dip 2019”.

Save $418.78… when you become a club member.

Join the International Club and receive:

#1: The $299 “Live Well and Free Anywhere Program including SNAP”. Free.

Three reasons to consider banking at Jyske Bank to protect your wealth.

The first reason? Recent European banking stress test shows that most European banks are in fair enough shape.

The second reason is the fact that European shares are selling at a much better price than US shares. The Morgan Stanley US Share Index shows US shares trading at 2.72 times book value while European shares are trading at 1.8 times book value. This means that good value is more likely to be found in European bank shares than in the USA.

One of my core portfolio holdings for over a decade has been shares in Jyske Bank.

Jyske Bank Share chart. (Click on image to enlarge.)

In 2002 I was conducting a seminar at Jyske’s headquarters in Silkeborg, Denmark. We had always been impressed by Jyske’s staff. The company had permeated the attitude amongst its people so they are super committed to giving good and unique customer service. I have been a client and have worked with the bank for over a decade and my experience has been that of great efficiency.

We were so impressed on the tour that in the middle of the presentation I borrowed Thomas Fischer’s cell phone and immediately bought Jyske shares at DKK 96.50 on 2nd September 2002.

The performance was so stellar that I sold a portion in April 2006 at DKK 352.50. Our profit was 265.28% in Danish kroner terms. But at the date of purchase the USD-DKK rate was 754 and dropped to 612 meaning that we gained another 18.8% in US dollars on the currency appreciation.

I held the remaining shares through the 2007 global equity market crash.

Jyske Bank share price 2006 to 2014. (Click on image to enlarge).

Though the shares have not returned to their 352 kroner per share level, I expect they will.

The third reason I like banking at Jyske and holding Jyske Bank shares. A Reuters’ announcement after the recent European bank stress test says: “Jyske Bank doubles nine-month profit, passes stress test”.

The article says: Jyske Bank said it had doubled pre-tax profit in the first nine months of this year to 3.4 billion Danish crowns ($579 million) from 1.7 billion crowns in the same period a year ago.

In addition the article pointed out that Jyske passed the stress test with a Capital Equity Tier 1 ratio of 13.6 percent, almost three times the minimum 5.5 percent threshold.

Protect Your Wealth From Mistakes

“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.” Warren Buffett

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.” Ben Graham

“We don’t have to be smarter than the rest. We have to be more disciplined than the rest.” Charlie Munger

We do not have to be brilliant to preserve our wealth. When it comes to investing, discipline can make you smarter than the smartest man in the world.

Sir Isaac Newton is widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time. His role was key in the scientific revolution.

His book “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” laid the foundations for mechanics.

He supplied a foundation to optics.

He helped develop modern calculus.

Newton formulated the laws of motion and gravitation and confirmed the heliocentric model of the cosmos.

Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope.

His theories about color and cooling and the speed of sound were spring boards in physics.

In math, Newton contributed to the study of power series, the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, and a method for approximating the roots of a function.

He is said to have been the greatest genius who ever lived!

But Sir Issac Newton also lost his shirt in the stock market. His comment was “I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies but not the madness of the people.“

Sir Issac forgot the intelligence in seeking value. He ignored the fact that buying and selling discipline is more important than being smart.

How can we gain this discipline? Discipline comes from simple math which is why two of the three exports I use in my Purposeful investing course (Pi) and mathematicians not economists. I am happy to introduce an investing math program that instills investment discipline in our Pi course.

Use math, not emotion to protect your wealth.

There are time tested mathematical systems that can help you know when to take profits that maximizes gains and minimizes loss.

These systems help you seek value but also create disciplined exit strategies because one of the toughest decisions most of us have is to know when to sell a rising or falling share.

Human nature makes it harder to let winners run, than to cut loses.

Let’s look at a real time example of how purposeful investing strategies can increase profit. In this real example, in 2002 Merri and I invested in Jyske Bank shares. We were visiting the bank with a group of readers. We had been in Copenhagen for several days and took the group out to the bank’s headquarters in the small charming village of Silkeborg. We visited the CEO (who has been a friend for many years) in his new modest offices, saw the bank’s new currency trading room and visited with the Jyske Invest Fund Managers. What impressed us was the conservative and balanced thinking throughout the bank. There were no staff limos or corporate jets. The CEO’s office was small with walls of glass so staff could see him at work. The bank worked for and talked about the long term view.

Jyske Bank share price since September 2002.

We invested in Jyske shares at DKK96.50 on 2nd September 2002. We sold half in April 2006 at DKK352.50. The share price of the remaining shares we hold have never dropped below our purchase price. Today the share price is over DKK300 again.

Could I have done better with a mathematical system? I asked Dr. Richard Smith, CEO of Tradestops.com, who has a PhD in mathematics and is one of the experts we use in our system, to see how his trailing stops strategy would have increased my profit.

It turns out I could have done better. Much better. Here is the chart of the trailing stops that his strategy would have given me had I been using it.

Click on image to enlarge.

Let’s look at three scenarios to show the difference in profit between using simple buy and hold with no stops, my system of taking back the original investment and the Trailing Stops strategy. For simplicity sake, I am not including dollar to Danish kroner fluctuations. The forex fluctuations would make a difference if calculated in US dollars performance but we’ll analyze that element of the invest in another message.

Scenario #1: DKK100,000 becomes worth DKK350,158. Profit is DKK241,880 in 15 years. In this scenario we assume a DKK100,000 investment. The investment is at DKK96.50 so 1036 shares were purchased. The assumption in this scenario is that all the shares have been held. The price of today’s quote (April 23, 2015) is DKK330. The value is DKK341,880 on DKK100,000 invested.

Scenario #2: DKK100,000 becomes worth DKK357,679. Profit is DKK247,840 in 15 years. Assume again, DKK100,000 investment. 1036 shares were purchased at DKK96.50. In this scenario, (what I actually did), 285 shares when the price reached DKK352.50. This returned my original investment appx. DKK100,000. The remaining 751 shares at 330 (4/22/2015 price) are still held so are worth DKK 247,840. This represents a total profit of 247,840. This is a little better than keeping all the shares, except the shares sold in 2006 created new opportunity potential for nine years so this scenario is actually much better than the numbers appear.

Scenario #3: DKK 100,000 becomes worth DKK1,156,069. Profit is DKK1,056,069 in 15 years. As in the other two scenarios there was a DKK100,000 investment. 1036 shares were purchased at DKK96.50.

Dr. Smith, backtracked to and see what the system would have done would with this share.

Richard sent the exact dates with buy and sell numbers:

Exit @ 325.50 on 6/13/2006. All the shares are sold bringing in DKK337,218.

Buy @ 321.98 on 10/9/2006. The DKK337,218 buys 1047 shares.

Exit @ 404 on 6/8/2007. This sale grosses DKK422,988

Buy @ 118.5 on 3/20/2009. The DKK422,988 buys 3,569 shares

Exit @ 170 on 8/10/2011. This sale grosses DKK606,730

Buy @ 173.40 on 2/1/2012. The DKK606,730 buys 3,499 shares

Still in @ 330.4 on 4/22/2015. The share value at this time is DKK1,156,069.

Wow, what a difference if one followed and used the trailing stops. The trailing stops and re buy signals increase the investment by 11 times versus 3.5 times in the other scenario.

The Jyske shares have a volatility quotient at this time of 15.5% so would create a sell signal at around DKK287 at this time.

These scenarios are based on approximations and do not include trading costs, management fees, etc. so the real money in the bank would not be exactly this amount. For our analytical purposes this study suggests that trailing stops help us protect the successes we gain in spurts.

This type of math creates great discipline so you know not to sell too soon and give away profit but, also know not to hold too long and give away returns already made.

Yet using trailing stops only works when you have good shares to begin.

To easily spot good value, we use Keppler Asset Management as our first source of data. We follow the analysis of our friend, Michael Keppler.

Michael Keppler is an expert on stock market value and I have worked with him for nearly 30 years because the best way to create long term multi currency investment profits is to get good value in the shares you buy.

Michael continually researches international major stock markets and compares their value based on current book to price, cash flow to price, earnings to price, average dividend yield, return on equity and cash flow return. He compares each major stock market’s history. From this he develops his Good Value Major Stock Market Strategy, an analysis that is rational, mathematical and does not worry about short ups and downs.

Michael Keppler. In my opinion, Michael is one of the best market statisticians in the world.

Numerous very large fund managers use his analysis to manage funds. In January, his company, Keppler Asset Management, was, for the third consecutive year, named Best Fund Company in the Fund Specialists’ category by Capital, a leading German business magazine. Keppler’s firm was one of only six out of 100 companies tested that received the highest five-star rating based on an independent evaluation of fund quality, management, and customer service by Feri Rating & Research and Steria Mummert Consulting.

Yet you have not heard about Keppler nor can you hire his services because he only serves mutual funds and institutional investors for investors in Europe.

This is why I want to introduce you to our Purposeful investing Course (Pi) with this special offer.

Investing Beyond the Boom

Warren Buffet once warned against the Cinderella effect.

He said “Don’t be fooled by that Cinderella feeling you get from great returns. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know the party must end but nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnight. There’s a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands.”

Cinderella may have lost a shoe when she fled the party to meet a midnight curfew. We can lose much more when we rush from a crashing stock market.

Most investors face emotional dangers that build in rising markets.

Almost everyone feels good.

But the he clock of economic reckoning is ticking.

No wants to see it. Nothing rises forever and especially… not everything at the same time.

Yet no one wants to leave the party until the end.

But many edge closer to the door.

When the clock chimes there could be a stampede even though leaving in a hurry may be the worst way to go.

Here are seven steps that can help avoid this risk.

Choose investments based on markets instead of shares.

Diversify based on value.

Rely on financial information rather than economic news.

Keep investing simple.

Keep investing costs low.

Trade as little as possible.

Make the decision process during panics automatic.

One strategy is to invest in country ETFs that easily provide diversified, risk-controlled investments in countries with stock markets of good value. These ETFs provide an easy, simple and effective approach to zeroing in on value. Little management and less guesswork is required. The expense ratios for most ETFs are lower than those of the average mutual funds. Plus a single country ETF provides diversification equal to investing in dozens, even hundreds of shares.

A minimum of knowledge, time, management or guesswork are required.

The importance of…

easy…

transparent…

and inexpensive.

Keeping investing simple is one of the most valuable, but least looked at, ways to avoid disaster. Simple and easy investing saves time. How much is your time worth? Simple investing costs less and avoids fast decisions during stressful times in complex situations where we are most likely to get it wrong.

Easy to use, low cost, mathematically based habits and routines help protect against negative emotions and impulse investing.

Take control of your investing. Make decisions based on data and discipline, not gut feelings. The Purposeful investing Course (Pi) teaches math based, low cost ways to diversify in good value markets and in ETFs that cover these markets. This course is based on my 50 years of investing experience combined with wisdom gained from some of the world’s best investment managers and economic mathematical scientists.

Enjoy Repeated Wealth With Pi

Pi’s mission is to make it easy for anyone to have a strategy and tactics that continually maintain safety and turn market turmoil into extra profit.

One secret is to invest with a purpose beyond the immediate returns. This helps create faith in a strategy that adds stickiness to the plan.

Another tactic is to invest with enough staying power so you’re never caught short.

Never have to sell depressed assets during periods of loss.

Lessons from Pi are based on the creation and management of Model Portfolios, called Pifolios.

The success of Pifolios is based on ignoring economic news (often created by someone with vested interests) and using financial math that reveals deeper economic truths.

One Pifolio covers all the good value developed markets. Another covers the emerging good value markets.

The Pifolio analysis begins with a continual research of 46 major stock markets that compares their value based on:

#1: Current book to price

#2: Cash flow to price

#3: Earnings to price

#4: Average dividend yield

#5: Return on equity

#6: Cash flow return.

#7: Market history

This is a complete and continual study of almost all the developed major and emerging stock markets.

This mathematical analysis forms the basis of a Good Value Stock Market Strategy. The analysis is rational, mathematical and does not worry about short term ups and downs.

This strategy is easy for anyone to follow and use. Pi reveals the best value markets and provides contacts to managers and analysts and Country Index ETFs so almost anyone can create and follow their own strategy.

The course examines and regularly reports on the hows and whys of seven professionally managed portfolios so we can learn how managers find and invest in good value. The Pifolios are:

Keppler Good Value Developed and Emerging Market Pifolios

State Street Global Advantage Emerging & Developed Market Pifolios

Gold & Silver Dip Pifolio

ENR Advisory Extra Pifolio

Tradestops.com Trailing Stops Pifiolio

As you can see in this image (click to enlarge) the top performing Pifolio we are tracking is the State Street Global Advantage Pifolio was up 43.15%. Here is the breakdown of that current Pifolio.

Learn how to invest like a pro from the inside out.

State Street is one of the largest fund managers in the world and their Global Advantage funds invest in good value shares in good value markets.

In the updates we review each portfolio, what has been purchased and sold, why, the ramifications for high risk, medium risk and low risk investors.

At the beginning of 2018 my personal Pifolio is based on select ETFs in the Keppler Developed and Emerging markets. My Pifolio is invested in Country ETFs that cover seven developed and three emerging markets:

This portfolio has outperformed the US market (S&P 500) in 2017 as the chart below shows.

My portfolio blue. S&P 500… green.

Regardless of economic news, these markets represent good value and have been chosen based on four pillars of valuation.

Absolute Valuation

Relative Valuation

Current versus Historic Valuation

Current Relative versus Relative Historic Valuation

When you subscribe to Pi, you immediately receive a 120 page basic training course that teaches the Pi Strategy. You learn all the Pi strategies, what they are, how to use them and what each can do for you, your lifestyle and investing.

You also begin receiving regular emailed Pifiolio updates and online access to all the Pifolio updates of the last two years. Each update examines the current activity in a Pifolio, how it is changing, why and how the changes might help your investing or not.

Included in the basic training is an additional 120 page PDF value analysis of 46 stock markets (23 developed markets and 23 emerging stock markets). This analysis looks at the price to book, price to earnings, average yield and much more.

You also receive two special reports.

In the 1980s, a remarkable set of two economic circumstances helped anyone who spotted them become remarkably rich. Some of my readers made enough to retire. Others picked up 50% currency gains. Then the cycle ended. Warren Buffett explained the importance of this ending in a 1999 Fortune magazine interview. He said: Let me summarize what I’ve been saying about the stock market: I think it’s very hard to come up with a persuasive case that equities will over the next 17 years perform anything like—anything like—they’ve performed in the past 17!

I did well then, but always thought, “I should have invested more!” Now those circumstances have come together and I am investing in them again.

The circumstances that created fortunes 30 years ago were an overvalued US market (compared to global markets) and an overvalued US dollar. The two conditions are in place again!

30 years ago, the US dollar rose along with Wall Street. Profits came quickly over three years. Then the dollar dropped like a stone, by 51% in just two years. A repeat of this pattern is growing and could create up to 50% extra profit if we start using strong dollars to accumulate good value stock market ETFs in other currencies.

This is the most exciting opportunity I have seen since we started sending our reports on international investing ideas more than three decades ago. The trends are so clear that I have created a short, but powerful report “Three Currency Patterns for 50% Profits or More.” This report shows how to earn an extra 50% from currency shifts with even small investments. I kept the report short and simple, but included links to 153 pages of Good Value Stock Market research and Asset Allocation Analysis.

The report shows 20 good value investments and a really powerful tactic that shows the most effective and least expensive way to accumulate these bargains in large or even very small amounts (less than $5,000). There is extra profit potential of at least 50% so the report is worth a lot.

This report sells for $29.95 but in this special offer, you receive the report, “Three Currency Patterns for 50% Profits or More” FREE when you subscribe to Pi.

Plus get the $39.95 report “The Silver Dip 2018” free.

With investors watching global stock markets bounce up and down, many missed two really important profit generating events over the last two years. The price of silver dipped below $14 an ounce as did shares of the iShares Silver ETF (SLV). The second event is that the silver gold ratio hit 80, compared to a ratio of 230 only two years before.

In September 2015, I prepared a special report “Silver Dip 2015” about a silver speculation, leveraged with a British pound loan, that could increase the returns in a safe portfolio by as much as eight times. The tactics described in that report generated 62.48% profit in just nine months.

I have updated this report and added how to use the Silver Dip Strategy with platinum. The “Silver Dip 2017” report shares the latest in a series of long term lessons gained through 40 years of speculating and investing in precious metals. I released the 2015 report, when the gold silver ratio slipped to 80. The ratio has corrected and that profit has been taken and now a new precious metals dip has emerged.

I have prepared a new special report “Silver Dip 2018” about a leveraged speculation that can increase the returns in a safe portfolio by as much as eight times.

You also learn from the Value Investing Seminar, our premier course, that we have been conducting for over 30 years. Tens of thousands of delegates have paid up to $999 to attend. Now you can join the seminar online FREE in this special offer.

This three day course is available in sessions that are 10 to 20 minutes long for easy, convenient learning. You can listen to each session any time and as often as you desire.

The sooner you hear what I have to say about current markets, the better you’ll be able to cash in on perhaps the best investing opportunity since 1982.

Tens of thousands have paid up to $999 to attend.

This year I celebrated my 50th anniversary of writing about global investing. Our reports and seminars have helped readers have better lives, with less stress yet make fortunes during up and down markets for decades. This information is invaluable to investors large and small because even small amounts can easily be invested in the good value shares we cover in our seminar.

Stock and currency markets are cyclical. These cycles create extra profit for value investors who invest when everyone else has the markets wrong. One special seminar session looks at how to spot value from cycles. Stocks rise from the cycle of war, productivity and demographics. Cycles create recurring profits. Economies and stock markets cycle up and down around every 15 to 20 years as shown in this graph.

The effect of war cycles on the US Stock Market since 1906.

Bull and bear cycles are based on cycles of human interaction, war, technology and productivity. Economic downturns can create war.

The chart above shows the war – stock market cycle. Military struggles (like the Civil War, WWI, WWII and the Cold War: WW III) super charge inventiveness that creates new forms of productivity…the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, production line processes, jet engines, TV, farming techniques, plastics, telephone, computer and lastly during the Cold War, the internet. The military technology shifts to domestic use. A boom is created that leads to excess. Excess leads to correction. Correction creates an economic downturn and again to war.

Details in the online seminar include:

* How to easily buy global currencies, shares and bonds.

* Trading down and the benefits of investing in real estate in Small Town USA. We will share why this breakout value is special and why we have been recommending good value real estate in this area since 2009.

* What’s up with gold and silver? One session looks at my current position on gold and silver and asset protection. We review the state of the precious metal markets and potential problems ahead for US dollars. Learn how low interest rates eliminate opportunity costs of diversification in precious metals and foreign currencies.

* How to improve safety and increase profit with leverage and staying power. The seminar reveals Warren Buffett’s value investing strategy from research published at Yale University’s website. This research shows that the stocks Buffet chooses are safe (with low beta and low volatility), cheap (value stocks with low price-to-book ratios), and high quality (stocks of companies that are profitable, stable, growing, and with high payout ratios). His big, extra profits come from leverage and staying power. At times Buffet’s portfolio, as all value portfolios, has fallen, but he has been willing and able to wait long periods for the value to reveal itself and prices to recover.

This chart based on a 45 year portfolio study shows that holding a diversified good value portfolio (based on a good value strategy) for 13 month’s time, increases the probability of out performance to 70%. However those who can hold the portfolio for five years gain a 88% probability of beating the bellwether in the market and after ten years the probability increases to 97.5%.

Time is your friend when you use a good value strategy. The longer you can hold onto a well balanced good value portfolio, the better the odds of outstanding success.

Learn how much leverage to use. Leverage is like medicine, the key is dose.The best ratio is normally 1.6 to 1. We’ll sum up the strategy; how to leverage cheap, safe, quality stocks and for what period of time based on the times and each individual’s circumstances.

Learn to plan in a way so you never run out of money. The seminar also has a session on the importance of having and sticking to a plan. See how success is dependent on conviction, wherewithal, and skill to operate with leverage and significant risk. Learn a three point strategy based on my 50 years of investing experience combined with wisdom gained from some of the world’s best investment managers and economic mathematical scientists.

The online seminar also reveals the results of a $80,000 share purchase cost test that found the least expensive way to invest in good value. The keys to this portfolio are good value, low cost, minimal fuss and bother. Plus a great savings of time. Trading is minimal, usually not more than one or two shares are bought or sold in a year. I wanted to find the very least expensive way to create and hold this portfolio so I performed this test.

I have good news about the cost of the seminar as well. For almost three decades the seminar fee has been $799 for one or $999 for a couple. Tens of thousands paid this price, but online the seminar is $297.

In this special offer, you can get this online seminar FREE when you subscribe to our Personal investing Course.

Save $468.90 If You Act Now

Subscribe to the first year of The Personal investing Course (Pi). The annual fee is $299, but to introduce you to this online, course that is based on real time investing, I am knocking $102 off the subscription. Plus you receive FREE the $29.95 report “Three Currency Patterns for 50% Profits or More”, the $39.95 report “Silver Dip 2018” and our latest $297 online seminar for a total savings of $468.90.

Triple Guarantee

Enroll in Pi. Get the basic training, the 46 market value report, access to all the updates of the past two years, the two reports and the Value Investing Seminar right away.

#1: I guarantee you’ll learn ideas about investing that are unique and can reduce stress as they help you enhance your profits through slow, worry free, easy diversified investing.

If you are not totally happy, simply let me know.

#2: I guarantee you can cancel your subscription within 60 days and I’ll refund your subscription fee in full, no questions asked.

#3: You can keep the two reports and Value Investing Seminar as my thanks for trying.

You have nothing to lose except the fear. You gain the ultimate form of financial security as you reduce risk and increase profit potential.

We are just back from sharing a great weekend in Quebec with readers and our friends at ENR Asset Management and Jyske Bank. Delegates at our annual October International Investing Seminar were warned that the US market was ready to correct but that most investors have their expectations turned upside down.

The thundering herd believes that the last year has been a bull market. They think that a bear is on the way. Delegates learned that this is not the case and that the upcoming correction could offer equity deals of a lifetime.

We had three days of intense talks in Montreal, then headed north on the train through the countryside to Quebec City.

We rode through woodlots and past streams between…

rich grain fields and farmland.

There we enjoyed the sense of Quebec’s last 400+ years of history.

We walked and walked and walked through Old Quebec City and cruised the St. Lawrence River.

We talked a lot about what has happened to North America and mankind’s lessons learned over this time.

Thinking about history is vital to investing. As Sir Winston Churchill said: “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

One short term slice of history that represented a main theme in the seminar was the repetition of 17 year cycles in the Dow Jones Industrial Index.

We looked at these cycles and one reader kindly charted the cycle so we can see how steady this history has been in the past.

Click on Dow chart to enlarge.

History suggests that this correction is just one of several in the current 17 year bear sideways market and that the next Golden Era bull market should start in about three years.

We have to survive this correction, but those who wisely see downturns at this time as periods of great opportunity might be like the few who arrived along the St. Lawrence four centuries ago and said Wow! What an opportunity!

Lighten your weighting in equities now. Take profits. Be ready to begin accumulating.

We’ll review more details of the Montreal seminar in upcoming posts, but the message here is to get ready! A time of truly great opportunity is ahead. We should start preparing how for the bull ahead.

Gary

Gain From the Volatility of the Next Four Years

However America’s politics turn out, one thing is sure. There will be volatility in stock markets during the next four years.

The first reason markets will bounce has nothing to do with politics or policies. The market’s downward shift is simply due regardless of the party or the person in office.

Second the new politics will create an uncertain era. Everyone is shaken whether they are pleased with the election or not and nothing frightens markets like uncertainty.

Third we’ll see rising interest rates over the next 48 months. This will push markets down.

Despite these pitfalls, there is a way to profit using the downtrends to pick up good value shares.

During nearly five decades of global investing I have noticed found that good value strategies increase through bull markets and bear, through good presidents and bad. The steps to take are simple.

The first tactic is to seek safety before profit.

We can look at Warren Buffett’s investing strategy as an example. Buffett success is talked about a lot, but rarely does anyone explain how he make so much money. That was the fact until some researchers really stripped his operation bare. They looked at everything and learned the deepest of Buffett’s wealth management secrets. Fortunately they published all in a research paper at Yale University’s website. that reveals important truths about extending wealth.

This research shows that the stocks Buffett chooses are safe (with low beta and low volatility), cheap (value stocks with low price – to – book ratios), and high quality (stocks of companies that are profitable, stable, growing, and with high payout ratios).

The second tactic is to maintain staying power. At times Buffet’s portfolio has fallen, but he has been willing and able to wait long periods for the value to reveal itself and prices to recover.

This chart based on a 45 year portfolio study shows that holding a diversified good value portfolio (based on a good value strategy) for 13 month’s time, increases the probability of outperformance to 70%. However those who can hold the portfolio for five years gain a 88% probability of beating the bellwether in the market and after ten years the probability increases to 97.5%. Time is your friend when you use a good value strategy. The longer you can hold onto a well balanced good value portfolio the better the odds of outstanding success.

The Buffett strategy integrates time and value for safety and profit.

A third tactic is using limited leveraging, tactic in the strategy boosts profit. Buffett leverages his portfolio at a ratio of approximately 1.6 to 1. The Yale published research paper shows the leveraging methods used by Warren Buffett to amass his $50 billion fortune. The researchers found that the returns from Buffett’s investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, far outweighed those achieved by any rival that has operated for 30 years or more. The research shows that neither luck nor magic are involved. Instead, the paper shows that Buffet’s success hinges on using leverage at the rate of 1.6.

To sum up the strategy, Buffet uses limited leverage to invest in large purchases of “cheap, safe, quality stocks”. He limits leverage so he can hold on for very long periods of time, surviving rough periods where others might have been forced into a fire sale or a career shift.

Stated in another way buffet uses logic (buy good value) to have the conviction, wherewithal, and skill to invest with leverage over many decades.

What do we do when we are not Warren Buffett?

May I introduce the Purposeful Investing Course (Pi) for those who want to invest like Warren Buffet, but know they are not. This course is based on my 50 (almost) years of investing experience combined with wisdom gained from some of the world’s best investment managers and economic mathematical scientists.

Enjoy Extending Wealth

Pi’s mission is to make it easy for anyone to create a three point strategy, like Buffett’s even though they do not have a lot of time for or knowledge about investing.

Pi reveals investing secrets and the sciences that make investing easy, safer, less time consuming and increases the chances of profit.

One secret is to invest with a purpose beyond the cash. One tactic as mentioned is staying power. This means not being caught short and having to sell during a period of loss. This also means having enough faith in a strategy that we stick to the plan. When we invest with purpose, doing what we love, we enjoy the process more and are more likely to hold on during down times, when most poor investors panic and sell.

Slow, Worry Free, Good Value Investing

Stress, worry and fear are three of an investor’s worst enemies. They create the Behavior Gap, a trait exhibited by most investors, that causes them to underperform any market sector they choose. The behavior gap is created by natural human responses to fear. Pi helps create profitable strategies that avoid losses from this gap.

Spanning the Behavior Gap

Behavior gaps are among the biggest reasons why so many investors fail. Human evolution makes fear the second most powerful motivator. (Greed is the third.) Fear creates investment losses due to behavior gaps. Fear motivates us more strongly than desire. By nature investors are risk adverse.

Winning investors though embrace risk because they have a plan based on good value.

Purpose is the most powerful motivator, stronger than fear and greed, so a strategy with purpose is the most powerful of all.

Combine your needs and capabilities with good value secrets and the math to back up your value selections through the Pifolio – The Pi Model Portfolio

Lessons from Pi are based on the creation and management of a Primary Pi Model Portfolio, called the Pifolio. There are no secrets about this portfolio except that it ignores the stories (often created by someone with vested interests) and is based entirely on good math.

The Pifolio is a theoretical portfolio of MSCI Country Benchmark Index ETFs that cover all the good value markets using my (almost) 50 years of global experience and my study of the analysis of four mathematical investing geniuses (and friends).

The Pifolio analysis begins with a continual research of international major stock markets that compares their value based on:

#1: Current book to price

#2: Cash flow to price

#3: Earnings to price

#4: Average dividend yield

#5: Return on equity

#6: Cash flow return.

#7: Market history

We follow this research of a brilliant mathematician and have tracked this analysis for over 20 years. This is a complete and continual study of international major and emerging stock markets.

This analysis forms the basis of a Good Value Stock Market Strategy. The analysis is rational, mathematical and does not worry about short term ups and downs. This strategy is easy for anyone to follow and use. Pi reveals the best value markets and provides contacts to managers and analysts and Country Index ETFs so almost anyone can create and follow their own strategy.

A country ETF provides diversification and cost efficiency by spreading one simple, even small investment into a basket of equities in a good value stock market. The costs are low and this type of ETF is one of the hardest for institutions to cheat. Expense ratios for most ETFs are lower than those of the average mutual fund.

Little knowledge, time, management or guesswork are required. The investment is simply a diversified portfolio of good value indices. Investments in an index are like investments in all the shares of a good value market.

Pi matches this mathematical certainty with my fifty years of experience. This opens insights to numerous long term cycles that most investors miss because they have not been investing long enough to see them.

For example in the 1980s, a remarkable set of two economic circumstances helped anyone who spotted them become remarkably rich. Some of my readers made enough to retire. Others picked up 50% currency gains. Then the cycle ended. Warren Buffett explained the importance of this ending in a 1999 Fortune magazine interview. He said: Let me summarize what I’ve been saying about the stock market: I think it’s very hard to come up with a persuasive case that equities will over the next 17 years perform anything like—anything like—they’ve performed in the past 17!

I did well then, but always thought, “I should have invested more!” Now those circumstances have come together and I am investing in them again.

The circumstances that created fortunes 30 years ago were an overvalued US market (compared to global markets) and an overvalued US dollar.

The two conditions are in place again! There are currently ten good value (non US) developed markets, plus 10 good value emerging markets.

Pi shows how to easily create a diversified, worry free portfolio in some of these good value markets using Country Index ETFs.

The current strength of the US dollar is a second remarkable similarity to 30 years ago. The dollar rose along with Wall Street. Profits came quickly over three years. Then the dollar dropped like a stone, by 51% in just two years. A repeat of this pattern is growing and could create up to 50% extra profit if we start using strong dollars to accumulate good value stock market ETFs in other currencies.

This is the most exciting opportunity I have seen since we started sending our reports on international investing ideas more than three decades ago. There is so much more to write and the trends are so clear that I have created a short, but powerful report “Three Currency Patterns For 50% Profits or More.” This report shows how to earn an extra 50% from currency shifts with even small investments. I kept the report short and simple, but included links to 153 pages of Good Value Stock Market research and Asset Allocation Analysis.

The report shows 20 good value investments and a really powerful tactic that shows the most effective and least expensive way to accumulate these bargains in large or even very small amounts (less than $5,000). There is extra profit potential of at least 50% so the report is worth a lot.

This report sells for $29.95 but you’ll receive the report “Three Currency Patterns For 50% Profits or More” FREE when you subscribe to Pi.

Leverage

Pi also explains when leverage provides extra potential without undo risk. For example in 1986 I issued a report called “The Silver Dip” that showed how to borrow 12,000 British pounds (at almost 1.6 to 1 dollars per pound the loan created US$18,600) and use the loan to buy 3835 ounces of silver at around US$4.85 an ounce.

Silver had crashed, I mean really crashed from $48 per ounce. As prices decreased from early 1983 into 1986, total supply had fallen to 449.7 million ounces in 1986. Mine production was restricted by the low prices at this time, with silver reaching a low for this period of $4.85 in May 1986. Secondary recovery also was constricted by these low prices.

Then silver’s price skyrocketed to over $11 an ounce within a year. The $18,600 loan was now worth $42,185.

The loan was in pounds and in May 1986 the dollar pound rate was 1.55 dollars per pound. So the 12,000 pound loan purchased $18,600 of silver. The pound then crashed to 1.40 dollars per silver. The loan could be paid off for $13,285 immediately creating an extra $5,314 profit. The profit grew to $47,499 in just a year.

Conditions for the silver dip have returned. The availability of low cost loans and silver are at an all time low. The price of silver has crashed from nearly $50 an ounce to below $14 as did shares of the iShares Silver ETF (SLV).

(Click on chart from Google.com (1) to enlarge.) Imagine investing in a spike like this… with leverage!

At the same time the silver gold ratio hit 80, a strong sign to invest in precious metals.

I have updated a special report “Silver Dip 2016” about a leveraged silver speculation that can increase the returns in a safe portfolio by as much as eight times. The purpose of the report is to share long term lessons gained through 30 years of speculating and investing in precious metals. While working on the report, when the gold silver ratio slipped to 80 and the price of silver dropped below $14 an ounce, I knew I needed to share this immediately.

I released a new report “Silver Dip 2015” so readers were able to take advantage of these conditions and leverage 1.6 times as a speculation. That report generated profits as high as 212% and a revised 2017 issue has been produced.

“The Silver Dip 2106” sells for $39.95 but you receive “Silver Dip 2017” FREE when you subscribe to Pi.

Save

Subscribe to the first year of The Personal investing Course (Pi). The annual fee is $299, but to introduce you to this online, course that is based on real time investing, I am knocking $102 off the subscription. Plus you receive the $29.95 report “Three Currency Patterns For 50% Profits or More” and the $39.95 report “The Silver Dip 2017 free.

Triple Guarantee

Enroll in Pi. Get the first monthly issue of Pi, and the report “Three Currency Patterns For 50% Profits or More” and “The Silver Dip 2016” right away.

#1: I guarantee you’ll learn ideas about investing that are unique and can reduce stress as they help you enhance your profits through slow, worry free purposeful investing.

If you are not totally happy, simply let me know.

#2: I guarantee you can cancel your subscription within 60 days and I’ll refund your subscription fee in full, no questions asked.

#3: I guarantee you can keep “Three Currency Patterns For 50% Profits or More” and “The Silver Dip 2106” report as my thanks for trying.

You have nothing to lose except the fear. You have the ultimate form of financial security to gain.